PARIS, August 29. /TASS/. Germany is in a state of conflict with Russia, Chancellor Friedrich Merz told French TV channel LCI in an interview.
"We are already in a state of conflict with Russia," he said.
This is because Russia is allegedly "destabilizing a large part" of Germany and conducting intervention operations through social networks, he said. According to Merz, the intelligence services report to him about daily attacks on infrastructure and the influence on public opinion from Russia.
Merz also said that "this is exactly how he sees Russian President Vladimir Putin," when a TV channel journalist asked him to comment on the words of French leader Emmanuel Macron, who called the Russian president "a predator at the door" of Europe.
Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said earlier that the French president's statements sometimes cross the line of the reasonable and the decent, becoming low-grade insults against Russia and its people, noting that Macron's statements about "a predator" and "a cannibal" in the person of the Russian president were made in the context of the Ukrainian crisis. She said that the situation around Ukraine was provoked to a large extent "with the active participation of Macron's predecessors, the previous presidents of France." Zakharova added that France was an active participant in the coup in Ukraine and that such a policy is actually predatory.
As for the statements about a conflict between Germany and Russia, a similar statement by former Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbok in the past caused a debate in the country, and was later denied by the Foreign Ministry. Speaking at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg in January 2023, Baerbock argued that European countries were "waging a war against Russia, not against each other," and called for increased aid to Kiev. The minister also stated that "Germany is already at war with Russia." The German Foreign Ministry told Bild later that providing support to Kiev does not make Germany a party to the conflict in Ukraine.