There she was again, six months after exiting the German chancellery. Relaxed but pensive after long walks on blustering Baltic shores listening to "Macbeth" on audiobook, Angela Merkel had so much on her mind, so much she wanted to explain for posterity. But she didn’t come to offer apologies or mea culpas.
Reflecting on decades of interactions with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Merkel said she’d always known that commerce and dialogue alone wouldn’t turn him into a good neighbor. But what was Germany supposed to do: Ignore the largest country on its continent?
She grasped early on, she recalled, that Putin “hated” democracy and wanted to “destroy” the European Union, which he viewed as a gateway drug to NATO membership for former Soviet Republics like Ukraine, which he considers part of Russia’s — and therefore, his own — sphere of influence.
