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Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel has used her first public speech in around six months to condemn the war in Ukraine.
“My solidarity goes to Ukraine, which was attacked and invaded by Russia, and to its right to self-defense,” she said at an event Wednesday, adding that she supported all efforts by Germany and international actors to “stop this barbaric war of aggression by Russia.”
“Bucha is representative of this horror,” she said, in reference to the Kyiv suburb that was the scene of suspected war crimes.
Merkel, who learned Russian growing up in East Germany, was a key actor on the world stage in her 16 years as chancellor. She previously condemned Russia’s war in Ukraine in a statement to German news agency dpa in February, but has otherwise refrained from speaking publicly on the situation.
However, the former leader has also been criticized for her support of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which would have delivered Russian gas directly to Germany, even after the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014. The project was stopped by her successor, Olaf Scholz, two days before the Russian invasion began.
Merkel’s predecessor, Gerhard Schröder, was a longtime ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin and until recently served as chairman of Russian state energy giant Rosneft. He was instrumental in deepening Germany’s reliance on Russian energy.
After Merkel took power in 2005, Berlin’s dependency increased further still, with Russian supplies until recently representing an estimated 50 to 70 percent of Germany’s gas imports.
The war in Ukraine led to a dramatic reversal of Germany’s decades-long refusal to send weapons to war zones, with Scholz also announcing an extra 100 billion euros ($108 billion) of funding for the country’s military over the coming years.
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