It's because in the liberal discourse what Merkel is saying is:

"Putin is evil/crazy and always wanted to invade unprovoked. This is why we tricked the evil dictator to help prepare Ukraine for the inevitable unprovoked invasion."

Of course the conclusion of this reasoning is that the "west" should just go to war with Russia, but they don't want to admit yet that this is the conclusion of the train of thought that starts with "Putin is inherently evil and wants to invade Europe."

all the libs on that twit are saying merkel's trying to make herself look good after doing nothing to help ukraine prepare for the invasion from minsk 2 to 2022 and instead helped Russia prepare their ebil ukrainian genocide invasion plan by buying their shit like normal countries do.

obviously they're clowns.

To anyone in the western states that's not paying attention, nobody will notice Merkel saying this. Those who are but accept wholesale what the State feeds them will either react like the libs above or go pogface about how brilliant the feds are in predicting the russian invasion during the russian invasion one and russian invasion two (the conflicts before minsk 1 and 2 for clarity). For everyone outside of the western media apparatus, it's another clear demonstration of the Feds willingness to create conflict in places there are none for their own benefit at the expense of everyone else.

First of all, it's possible she isn't telling the truth, given that she then went on to establish Nord Stream 2 with Russia - unless she was so naive that she expected that if Russia went to war with Ukraine, that somehow that economic bond would continue to link them regardless.

But it doesn't really matter either way, because literally all it does is confirm to Putin that the West cannot be trusted with any deal. Which honestly puts the entire Ukraine war in an interesting spot: how do you maintain some kind of lasting, if tenuous peace in (what's left of) Ukraine if the West has shown, multiple times, that they're perfectly fine with agreeing to deals that they have no plans to actually fulfill, for the sake of buying time to build up the means to destroy Russia? What does Russia do?

I've seen so many "How does this war end?" articles at this point that I just skip right over them when I see them, but it is becoming an ever more interesting question, and the options look very different to how they did in the spring and summer. Assuming that Russia is the victor (mainly just to constrain the options as Russia losing could mean a hundred different things), whatever being the "victor" means in this conflict other than not losing, I feel like there's at least four general classes of solutions:

1. A conflict that never actually ends and instead reaches a simmer where neither side has the will or ability to make significant advances anymore, and in like 2047 there's eventually some kind of official resolution (I don't think this is likely due to its existential nature for both sides whether neither can afford to lose, and both sides' population appear increasingly committed to it)

2. Some kind of demilitarized zone being drawn up, though the extent of it can vary wildly in scope; John Helmer recently wrote a piece on exactly this outcome and I was skeptical of his exact idea but the general idea of a DMZ is plausible and very possible if a deal is impossible

3. Russia's destruction of Ukraine's basic ability to function as a state leads, in the short, medium, and long terms, into such large population flows outwards because it's simply impossible to support people's survival in large numbers in that kind of environment, that Ukraine simply... stops existing. Like, maybe Lvov and a few other places nearby still exist as some kind of Polish-protected/annexed territory but most of the country not controlled by Russia is essentially a giant wildlife zone with abandoned towns and cities strewn throughout, with a population in the hundreds of thousands, maybe a million or two; the damage these migrant flows do to Europe triggers the fascist nationalist wave many of us have predicted - not to mention the loss of Ukraine as a source of food.

4. Russia takes control of the entire country of Ukraine, with maybe Poland nabbing Lvov and such, and the West spends the next few decades with a personal project to turn it into the country with the largest number of terrorists per square inch - though of course the media calls them freedom fighters or the "Ukrainian resistance".