Merkel’s legacy

SIR – Angela Merkel’s defence of her foreign policy (report, June 8) is torpedoed by the fact that Europe has been here before.

In 2009 Russia cut off gas supplies to most of south-eastern Europe in a dispute over Ukrainian debt. The message was clear: Ukraine complies or Europe pays. While Ukraine was not blameless, it was the impact on the rest of Europe that forced a settlement – and marked out Russia as an unreliable supplier, prepared to use Europe as leverage.

Mrs Merkel was warned. What did she do? She increased Germany’s dependence on Russian oil and gas, and thereby the whole of Europe’s. Her legacy is a democratic West turned supplicant and an emerging Eastern European democracy pauperised by the loss of most of its coastline and connected natural resources, and further impoverished by its loss of young lives. Shame on her.

Victor Launert

Matlock Bath, Derbyshire