[yostrovs]

Merkel was widely misquoted. Here's what she actually said. Note that she referred to Ukraine getting more time in order to mature enough to maybe join NATO, not to be able to fight Russia on its own:

"I thought that the introduction of NATO accession of Ukraine and Georgia, discussed in 2008, was wrong. The countries did not have the necessary prerequisites for this, nor was it fully understood what the consequences of such a decision would have been, both with regard to Russia’s actions against Georgia and Ukraine, as well as NATO and its rules of assistance. And the Minsk Agreement of 2014 was an attempt to give Ukraine time.

Ukraine used this time to become stronger, as you can see today. The Ukraine of 2014/15 is not the Ukraine of today. An illustrative example was the battle for Debaltseve. At the beginning of 2015, Putin could easily have overrun them at that time. And I very much doubt that the NATO countries could have done as much then as they do today to help Ukraine."

[actionfromafar]

Yes. You may dislike Merkel for her strategic decisions regarding fossil gas (I do), but there's no need to misquote her. That reads like a solid take to me.

[girvo]

I mean the simplest reason to misquote her is to muddy the waters and spread disinformation, so “no need” I don’t think quite holds. For some of the commenters here it seems they do have a need to do just that.