In 2011, Kohl, despite frail health, began giving a number of interviews and issued statements in which he sharply condemned his successor Angela Merkel, whom he had formerly mentored, on her policies in favour of strict austerity in the European debt crisis and later also towards Russia in the Ukrainian crisis, which he saw as opposed to his politics of peaceful bi-lateral European integration during his time as chancellor. He published the book "Aus Sorge um Europa" ("Out of Concern for Europe") outlining these criticisms of Merkel (while also attacking his immediate successor Gerhard Schröder's Euro policy) and was widely quoted in the press as saying, ""Die macht mir mein Europa kaputt"" ("That woman is destroying my Europe"). Kohl thus joined former German chancellors Gerhard Schröder and Helmut Schmidt in their similar criticisms of Merkel's policies in these two fields.