Ex-Chancellor Merkel says Europe should reopen dialogue with Russia

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Europe must try to reopen dialogue with Russia, even as she sharply criticized President Vladimir Putin for the war in Ukraine.

"There is absolutely no justification for Putin's idea of restoring a defunct empire," Merkel said in an interview done last week with Romanian broadcaster Pro TV, now aired as she visited Bucharest promoting her memoirs.

"The step he took in February 2022, when he attacked Ukraine, will forever be linked to his name," she said. "He destroyed the order that had been restored with great effort after World War II."

Merkel added: "And Russia remains a country with which we must try to reopen a dialogue. But as for the fact that he violated the principles of law: that fact cannot be overlooked. That is Putin's legacy—or his terrible testament."

The conservative politician led Germany from 2005 to 2021, the longest tenure of any postwar chancellor after Helmut Kohl.

Throughout that period, she combined public criticism of Moscow with an insistence that talking to the Kremlin was unavoidable. She became the West's most frequent interlocutor with the Kremlin, often by phone, and repeatedly said at that time the conflict in eastern Ukraine could be settled only by political means.