Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel has rejected accusations that she partially held Poland and the Baltic states responsible for the outbreak of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

“You have to call it fake news, meaning that it wasn’t said at all,” Merkel told German public broadcaster Phoenix in an interview published Thursday, saying her comments had been misrepresented.

“It was simply a discussion about chronological developments, as they already appear in my book “Freiheit”[Freedom]. For a whole year, no one had an issue with it … And then a big uproar arose because hardly anyone reads the original anymore,” she said. 

Asked whether she meant to blame the outbreak of the war on Poland or the Baltic states, Merkel replied: “No. We all failed — I, everyone else — we all failed to prevent this war, including in our talks with the Americans.”

In an October interview with Hungarian media outlet Partizán, Merkel noted the refusal by Poland and the Baltic states to permit direct talks between her, French President Emmanuel Macron and Russian President Vladimir Putin in response to Moscow’s troop buildup near the Ukrainian border in summer 2021.

Baltic and Polish leaders reacted furiously to Merkel’s comments, perceiving it as partly blaming them for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine half a year later.

On Thursday, Merkel elaborated on that statement, saying: “A few days before I made this proposal at the European Council, U.S. President Joe Biden had met with Vladimir Putin. And I simply didn’t think it was good that we Europeans were not also seeking a conversation with Putin and were leaving that entirely to the American administration.”

“That’s why I advocated for this new proposal, and there was opposition,” she added, emphasizing that no “attribution of blame” regarding responsibility for the war was implied in her statement.