German Chancellor Angela Merkel this week made her first trip to Russia since 2018, where she held "substantive" discussions with Russian President Vladimir Putin on a wide range of topics that touched on virtually every major global hotspot — including Iran, Syria, Libya and Ukraine — as well as the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, now targeted by US sanctions. The relationship between Merkel and Putin has had its ups and downs, reflective of the difficult reality faced by Germany in trying to juggle the increasingly contradictory demands of European leadership, including on the Ukraine crisis, and its own national interests. The fact that Merkel and Putin walked away from their three-hour meeting with more points of positive intersection than not serves as yet another reminder of the growing divide between Europe and the US.
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