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BERLIN, GERMANY - APRIL 17, 2023: Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel defends her cautious approach to Russia and her opposition to Ukraine's swift NATO membership in advance excerpts from her forthcoming book, published today (Nov. 26).In Freedom. Memories 1954-2021, Merkel also provided insights from her conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and explained why she opposed offering membership action plans (MAP) to Ukraine and Georgia during a key NATO 2008 summit in Bucharest.“I thought it was an illusion to assume that the MAP status would have protected Ukraine and Georgia from Putin's aggression, that this status would have had such a deterrent effect that Putin would have accepted … without doing anything,” Merkel wrote, arguing that such a move could have triggered a military response from Russia to make it impossible for Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO.Merkel acknowledged the strong desire of Central and Eastern European nations to join NATO swiftly after the Cold War, seeking integration with the Western community.However, she emphasized that the situations of Ukraine and Georgia differed significantly from those of other former Soviet states admitted to NATO in 1999 and 2004.“The Russian Navy's Black Sea Fleet was stationed on the Crimean Peninsula, which is part of Ukraine's territory, and the corresponding contract between Ukraine and Russia ran until 2017. Such an intertwining with Russian military structures had not previously existed in any of the NATO candidate countries,” Merkel noted, adding that at the time only a minority of Ukraine’s population supported the country's membership in NATO.“In Georgia, there were unresolved territorial conflicts in the regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which, according to NATO's general rules, were a reason not to grant the country's request for membership,” she added.(Footage by AA/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)