Overview

• Angela Merkel said Poland and the Baltic states blocked a June 2021 EU effort she and Emmanuel Macron proposed to speak directly with Vladimir Putin after concluding the Minsk process was failing.
• Polish and Baltic officials rejected her characterization, with Estonia’s foreign minister insisting Russia alone is responsible for the war and Latvia’s former prime minister saying Merkel misread Moscow then and now.
• Poland’s Mateusz Morawiecki condemned the comments, while Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski disputed her account and pointed to long-standing Polish objections over Nord Stream as evidence Germany ignored regional warnings.
• The Kremlin publicly embraced Merkel’s framing, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying the EU is held hostage by Baltic and Polish policies and that Merkel could be right about the blocked talks.
• Critics in Central and Eastern Europe warned the remarks risk reinforcing Russian propaganda narratives, even as some outlets noted Merkel did not explicitly assign co-responsibility for the invasion.