Putin exploited my fear of dogs in his power games, says Angela Merkel

Former German chancellor lifts the lid on her encounters with world leaders in memoir

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Angela Merkel has accused Vladimir Putin of exploiting her fear of dogs as part of his “power games” during a meeting with her at his Black Sea resort.
In extracts from her book Freiheit [Freedom], published by German newspaper Die Zeit, the former German chancellor said the encounter was typical of the Russian leader’s tactics.
Mrs Merkel was referring to their notorious meeting in Sochi in 2007, when Putin had Koni, his black labrador, enter the room – despite Mrs Merkel’s reported dislike of the animals.
Mrs Merkel, who is said to have been afraid of dogs since being bitten by one in 1995, wrote that Putin was “always on his guard to avoid being treated badly and always ready to dish it out, including power games with dogs and making others wait for him”.
Putin has claimed that he brought his pet out to make the former German leader feel more at ease by “doing something nice for her”.
In another extract from the 700-page memoir, due to be released next week, Mrs Merkel also addressed her dealings with an “emotional” Donald Trump who was “apparently fascinated with the Russian president”.
She said his “main aim was to make the person he was talking to feel guilty … at the same time I had the impression … that he also wanted the person he was talking to to like him.”
The 70-year-old also addressed the controversial moment when Mr Trump apparently refused to shake her hand before the cameras during a 2017 White House meeting in an apparent bid to humiliate her.
 “Instead of stoically bearing it, I whispered to him that we should shake hands again,” she writes. “As soon as the words left my mouth, I shook my head at myself. How could I forget what effect he wanted to achieve … he wanted to give people something to talk about with his behaviour.”
In another extract, Mrs Merkel revealed how she had asked the Pope for some advice on how to deal with politicians on the global stage in an apparent reference to Mr Trump.
“Without naming names, I asked him how he would deal with fundamentally different opinions in a group of important personalities,” she wrote.
“He understood me immediately and gave me a straightforward answer: ‘Bend, bend, bend, but make sure it doesn’t break’. I liked this image.”
Freiheit is a hotly anticipated memoir in Germany and was co-written by Mrs Merkel and Beate Baumann, her close adviser. Details of the contents of the book had been kept under wraps prior to the extracts published in Die Zeit.
In the book, Mrs Merkel also defended her refusal to grant Ukraine a pathway to Nato membership in 2008, warning it would have been “playing with fire”
“At the time only a minority of the Ukrainian population supported the country’s membership of Nato,” she wrote. “A deep rift ran through the country.”
“No other Nato candidate country had had such ties to Russian military structures,” she said, referring to the Russian Navy being stationed in Crimea, the peninsula controlled by Ukraine until the 2014 Russian annexation.
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