Russian President Vladimir Putin has failed to reach a single one of his goals in the war in Ukraine, according to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
“Not a single one of Putin’s plans has worked out,” Scholz said in a government statement in the Bundestag on Wednesday, adding that Putin had made a fundamental miscalculation.
He had believed that his troops would overrun Ukraine within days and that Europe and the democratic West were too divided to help Ukraine effectively.
“He believed he could dry up Europe’s solidarity by turning off our gas tap,” Scholz said.
Putin was wrong “about the courage of Ukrainians, about Europe, about us, about the character of our democracies, about our will to resist big power mania and imperialism,” Scholz said.