The former German chancellor Angela Merkel recalled in his memoirs the occasion when, during a meeting, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, He released his dog even though he knew that the former president feared these animals. “He showed the public, on another level, how he intended to send signals”, he maintains in its pages.
“Since the first time I met him as chancellor, in January 2006, I knew I was afraid of dogs. because at the beginning of 1995, in the Uckermark (region), one bit me“, Merkel confesses in her autobiography “Freedom”, which will be published next Tuesday and of which this Saturday the newspaper The Republic He took out some extracts.
The former chancellor explained that her diplomats had transferred the Russian president’s team his desire not to have dogs during their meetings.
“In 2006, in Moscow, he had respected our request, although he did not deprive himself of a small evil: In fact, he brought me a special gift, a big stuffed dog.and when you gave it to me He assured that that one did not bite”, recalled the former president.
However, things changed a year later, in 2007when Merkel met “in the flesh” the Russian president’s farmer, Koniduring a meeting at his residence in Sochi.
“As Putin and I posed for photographers sitting on armchairs before the meeting, I tried to ignore the animal, even though it wandered around me. Putin’s expression clearly said (at least to me) that he found the situation amusing.”, he confesses.
Merkel maintains that this action was an attempt by the Russian president to “send signals” to the world: “Putin showed the public, on another level, how he intended to send signalsif necessary with the help of his black Labrador, Koni, who he frequently had by his side when he received foreign guests,” he says.
“Did I just want to see how a person in distress reacts? Was it a small show of power? I just thought about not losing my cool, concentrating on the photographers, it will pass. When I finished the meeting, I did not discuss the topic with Putin and limited myself, as I often do, to the rule of the English aristocracy: ‘Never explain, never complain’”, writes the politician in her memoirs.
The politician, chancellor of Germany between 2005 and 2021 and one of the protagonists of European politics in that period, confesses that The Russian leader already hinted in 2006, almost two decades ago, of his intentions to perpetuate himself. in power.
Specifically, he remembers a moment with Putin in a car to an airport in Siberia in April 2006, after a business forum, when he told him that the Russian Constitution allowed re-election after two terms if the candidate “takes a break.” .
“The message I received from Putin’s few words, that spring day in Siberia, as we headed to an airport, left no doubt: ‘Please note that I continuealthough next year after two terms I will leave office to a successor, as the Constitution wants. I will return, it will be just a pause‘”, Merkel understood from her talk with the Russian president (in 2008 his right-hand man would succeed him, Dmitri Medvédevuntil 2012, when he returned to power).
In addition, The German recalls that Putin used to consider the end of the Soviet Union as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century” and that already in those years he lamented the United States defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Merkel expressed feeling “weigh” for the return of Donald Trump to power and remembered that Every meeting with him was “a competition: you or me.”. In an interview with the German weekly The mirrorl, published this Friday, Merkel stated that Trump “is a challenge for the world, especially for multilateralism”.
“What awaits us now is not easy at all”he said, since “This president dominates the strongest economy in the world”who has the dollar as the dominant currency.
Merkel, who led Germany for 16 years until the end of 2021, worked under four US presidents, including Trump during his first term, a period she described as the most tense in relations between the two countries during her time in office.
In the interview, the former chancellor recalled a particular episode that occurred in March 2017, during her first visit to Trump in the White House. In a widely publicized scene, the photographers were insistently asking for a handshakey Merkel he discreetly asked Trump: “Do you want to shake hands?” The American president-elect, with his hands clasped, looked ahead without responding.
“I tried to encourage him to shake hands with the photographers because I thought, constructively, that maybe he hadn’t realized they wanted that image,” Merkel said. “But of course his refusal was calculated”.
Although at other times during the visit both did shake hands, Merkel He highlighted that these types of gestures illustrated the dynamics of their relationship.
Asked how a German chancellor should deal with Trump, Merkel He commented that the former president is very curious and He looks for details, “but only to use them to his advantage, to find arguments that strengthen him and weaken others”.
“The number of people in the room influences your drive to be the winner.””he added. “You can’t talk to him. Every meeting is a competition: you or me.”
The memoir also details how the need to deal with leaders with completely opposite perspectives led to Merkel to seek unusual guidance. On a visit to the Vatican in 2017, he consulted the papa Francisco on how to address fundamental differences with key figures, without mentioning specific names. As he wrote in ‘Freedom’the pontiff recommended finding a balance between flexibility and firmness: “Bend, bend, bend, but be careful not to break”.
(With information from AP/EFE)
