Angela Merkel’s battle to defend her legacy on Russia and Ukraine shows how harshly decisions can be reappraised

Sometimes legacies aren’t what they initially seem to be. Case in point: Angela Merkel, the former German chancellor who, after months of conspicuous silence on the issue of her Russia policy, has finally begun fighting to defend her reputation.

When Merkel retired late last year, her legacy was already somewhat mixed. On the plus side, she was a trailblazer for women in European politics (and arguably further), and her 2015 decision to take in a million Syrian refugees was a moral beacon, even if it had the downside of emboldening the far right for a while. But her general lack of decisiveness—dithering on everything from climate protection to the digitization of Germany’s economy—was also a defining characteristic.

Now, though, her legacy seems swamped by the Ukraine crisis, and what she did and didn’t try to achieve when dealing with Vladimir Putin over her 16 years in power—a period in which Russia invaded both Georgia and Ukraine, with little in the way of consequences.

Last night, in her first interview since leaving office, she told a Berlin audience that she doesn’t blame herself for Russia’s full-on Ukraine assault this year, as she “tried to work in the direction of preventing mischief. And if diplomacy doesn’t succeed, this doesn’t mean that it was therefore wrong.”

Crucially, Merkel insisted that she had not been “naive” about the policy—broadly accepted in Germany for decades, until February—that held Russia’s behavior could be changed through continued trade links. Rather, she claimed she had always known Putin wanted to “destroy the EU” and had warned Germany’s allies as such.

“Which means she was cynical and devious,” shot back the former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves on Twitter. “She never explained this reasoning to her fellow EU leaders, at least those of us in [Central and Eastern Europe].” And, as Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak noted, Merkel’s new claim doesn’t fit comfortably with her relentless championing of Russian fossil fuels—an addiction that continues to feed Moscow’s war machine today.

Nobody expects leaders to be able to perfectly divine the future, but when they have a strong idea about what’s coming, they should do something about it. Yes, Merkel had responsibilities to the German economy—cheap Russian gas powers much of the nation’s industry, and Russia is/was a significant market for many German companies—but it does look a lot like her balancing act contributed to the bloody consequences we now see.

It’s rare to see legacies so dramatically flipped as we see now in the case of Merkel—maybe there’s some level of analogy to be found in the reappraisal of Alan Greenspan following the 2008 crash—but I have a feeling we’ll see more of it down the line, as what was once widely shared consensus becomes anathema.

In the corporate world, it’s easy to imagine people’s reputations being retroactively trashed over concessions made when dealing with the Chinese government, for example. And I have zero doubt that decisions to put profit above strong climate-protection measures will become indelible marks of shame for many of today’s business and political leaders. It doesn’t have to be that way, of course—but if those who know what needs to be done don’t actually go ahead and do it, it will be on them.

More news below.

David Meyer
@superglaze
david.meyer@fortune.com

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This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer.