In an article published today in Consortium News under the title “Merkel Reveals West’s Duplicity,” former weapons inspector and Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter outlines the grim reality of the showdown over Ukraine. Russia’s alleged “unprovoked aggression” against Ukraine is the reason stated over and over again as the cause of the war, yet Ritter points out statements by Germany’s then-Chancellor Angela Merkel and Ukrainian then-President Petro Poroshenko which give the lie to that narrative.
In an interview with Der Spiegel last week, former Chancellor Merkel referred to the 1938 Munich Compromise between Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler, and compared it to her own decision in 2008 not to allow Ukraine into NATO. Similar to Chamberlain then, Merkel said she thought she could “buy time” for Ukraine to build up its army to resist Russia. This would mean that the 2014-15 Minsk Agreements, and all “diplomacy” which followed, were merely disingenuous ploys by Germany and the West, and they had never intended to secure a genuine peace. Former Ukrainian President Poroshenko has said nearly the same thing as well.
“Merkel knew that inviting Ukraine into NATO would trigger a Russian military response,” Ritter wrote. But, “rather than reject this possibility altogether, Merkel instead pursued a policy designed to make Ukraine capable of withstanding such an attack.”
