MOSCOW (AP) — Top Russian defense and security officials are accusing the West of fomenting a new Cold War in a bid to retain waning influence in global affairs.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu says NATO is using “the non-existent Russian threat to methodically boost its military potential” and beef up its forces near Russia’s borders.
Speaking at a security conference Wednesday, Shoigu said Moscow will respond to NATO’s moves by strengthening its defense capabilities to “ensure military security of Russia and its allies.”
Russia-West relations have sunk to their lowest level since the Cold War following Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and support for separatists in eastern Ukraine. Tensions further escalated this month after the poisoning of an ex-Russian spy in Britain, leading to mass diplomats’ expulsions by the West and Russia.
But of course they do.
Am I the only one who is not the least surprised by this turn of events???
I thought not.
So now Trump will have to try extra hard to please Vlad.
Russia’s lies are so predictable and boring.
This is like Ribbentrop accusing Neville Chamberlain of formenting new hostilities between Germany and the Allies over Germany’s aid to oppressed ethnic Germans in Sudetenland.
Yeah, I went there.
Something went bad wrong in Russia around 2012, which saw the rise of the siloviki, the power agencies, and pushing aside everybody else, including economists who had helped bring Russia into the global economy during the 2000s. Putin was always around, but something changed.
By 2015, Russia was just making bizarre blunders such as opening its Arctic Norwegian border to 5,500 Syrian refugees on bicycles to create chaos.
Russia has an economy about the size of Italy’s, but less diversified thanks to its resource curse. It also has a media that works against literacy as in Italy and the US. Looking back, the US probably could have done more to help the pro-West, pro-normality factions in Russia. For example, the current central bank governor, Elvira Nebuilina comes from the earlier time. She was a Yale fellow and studied at MIT, has helped Russia create a pretty good monetary policy, with inflation below 4% (which was considered a joke when first proposed).
Having Trump as president does not help US credibility. Russians call him “nash Tramp” our Trump.