Guardian: Russia Threatening New Cold War

Call it “Cold War Wednesday” if you like, but today the Guardian also dedicated their front page to a long feature article carrying the headline “Russia threatening new cold war over missile defence.”

In an interview with the Guardian, the Kremlin’s chief spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said Moscow felt betrayed by the Pentagon’s move. “We were extremely concerned and disappointed. We were never informed in advance about these plans. It brings tremendous change to the strategic balance in Europe, and to the world’s strategic stability.” He added: “We feel ourselves deceived. Potentially we will have to create alternatives to this but with low cost and higher efficiency.” Any response would be within “existing technologies”, he said. As well as military counter-measures, Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, also wanted “dialogue” and “negotiations”, he added. … The same day Russia ruled out cooperating with the US over the shield. “Despite certain signals received in recent days from the US side … I see no political foundation for it,” said Sergei Ryabkov, a foreign ministry spokesman. Moscow now had little choice but to take the bases “into account in our strategic planning”, he said. Analysts said there was a common feeling in Russia that the US had reneged on an agreement after the collapse of the Soviet Union to abandon cold war politics. “Cold war thinking has prevailed, especially on the western side,” Yevgeny Myasnikov, a senior research scientist at Moscow’s Centre for Arms Control, told the Guardian. “Russia has been deeply disappointed by what has happened after 1991. Nato started to expand, and the US started to think it had won the cold war. We had hoped for a partnership. But it didn’t happen.”