Former Commander-in-Chief of the Lithuanian Armed Forces Jonas Vytautas Žukas claims that then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel allegedly pressured Ukrainians in 2014, DW reports, writes UNN.
Details
This statement was included in Žukas' book, published this year, and reported by the German daily newspaper Die Welt. The newspaper reports that this case caused outrage in Lithuania, but was previously unknown outside the country.
When asked by Die Welt for details, Jonas Vytautas Žukas replied that, as a Lithuanian commander, he had previously been in Kyiv. There, he allegedly spoke with Oleksandr Turchynov, the former speaker of parliament. When Žukas asked why Ukrainians did not defend the parliament building in Crimea from Russian occupation in 2014, he allegedly stated that "it was a recommendation from Angela Merkel, expressed in a phone conversation," the publication writes.
Die Welt believes this would be scandalous. The newspaper contacted Merkel's office for comment, but received a reply that the former chancellor does not comment on individual opinions appearing in the media.
The German daily newspaper estimates that Central and Eastern European countries have a negative attitude towards Chancellor Angela Merkel's government, not least after her interview with the Hungarian website Partizan, in which she suggested an indirect link between the outbreak of the war in Ukraine and the unwillingness of the countries in the region to negotiate with Russia.
"Behind Merkel's harsh assessments in Central and Eastern Europe lies the fundamental assumption that the chancellor caused significant and, above all, lasting damage to Germany and Europe in three important political areas, thereby enabling or at least contributing to Putin's war," write the authors of the article Philipp Fritz and Pavel Lokshin.
This concerns Germany's dependence on Russian energy supplies, the general naivety in its approach to Russia, and the underestimation of the consequences of mass immigration for Europe, writes Die Welt.