Russian diplomat blames US for “Cold War 2.0”

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The United States and its Western allies are to blame for the dire state of NATO-Moscow relations, according to a senior Russian diplomat at the United Nations.

The first Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, Dmitri Polyansky, on Wednesday accused the United States and NATO of “exploiting” the divisions in the former Soviet Union in the 1990s and of trying to “” crush “the newly emerged Russian Federation.

Russian diplomats are waging a targeted public offensive against the United States and its NATO allies, spurred by renewed tensions along the Ukrainian border where tens of thousands of Russian troops remain deployed.

The crisis has been going on for months, with Kiev and its Western backers calling for Russian de-escalation, but the Kremlin is demanding guarantees that Ukraine will never be allowed to join NATO. Joint NATO-Russia security talks are scheduled for mid-January.

Russian officials have echoed President Vladimir Putin’s argument that the West, not Moscow, is to blame for geopolitical tensions. NATO’s eastward expansion after the Soviet collapse is proof, they say, of Western duplicity and a plot to surround and suffocate Russia.

“Everyone thought that the West is our friend, that they really give us a helping hand so that we live in a better place, a better world and no one will ever remember the Cold War, the East and the of the West, “Polyansky told reporters Wednesday, according to Russian news agency Tass.

“But eventually things happened [the] in another way very quickly. “

“We have seen that the intentions of our colleagues are not as innocent as they were presented at the beginning,” Polyansky said. “We have seen a lot of Americans and Europeans exploit our country, trying to divide it, crush it, further divide Russia, promote separatism in Russia, promote divisions between Russia and the new states. emerged. “

Russia’s initial federal history has been “very difficult, very difficult”, with the country “really on the verge of collapse,” the diplomat added. But as the country moved through the 2000s, he said, “we started to be seen as a threat by the West, by the United States… What we have now is kind of a remake of the cold War. , Cold War 2.0. “

Polyansky suggested that there is no longer an ideological basis for the conflict. The United States, its Western allies and Russia have clashed repeatedly over human rights issues, in particular Moscow’s suppression of domestic political opposition. Russian intelligence services have been repeatedly linked to successful and failed assassinations of dissidents abroad.

“There is no communist ideology that Russia or whoever promotes it, our economic structure is very similar to that of the United States or any other western country, but the confrontation is there and the efforts to portray Russia as an enemy are also there, ”Polyansky said. “This of course reminds you of some conclusions that the issue was not about ideology but about geopolitical struggle, which is unfortunately back to existence at this time.”

At his annual question-and-answer press conference last week, Putin also accused his Western rivals of fueling the conflict with Moscow. The president refused to guarantee that Russian forces would invade Ukraine again, demanding security guarantees from the West instead.

“Our actions will not depend on negotiations, but on Russia’s unconditional security, now and in the future,” Putin said, referring to talks scheduled for January with US and NATO officials.

“We have made it clear that NATO’s expansion in the east is unacceptable,” Putin said. “What is not clear about this? “

“We are not the ones threatening someone, we are not the ones who came to the border from the United States or the United Kingdom; they came to us.” Putin continued. “And now they say, ‘We will have Ukraine too.'”

“You should come up with guarantees, now, immediately,” Putin said, speaking to the United States and NATO.

Putin presented the Ukrainian crisis as Russia’s response to NATO aggression. Russia already borders five NATO states – Poland, Norway, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia – posing serious security concerns for Moscow. The addition of Ukraine to the alliance would be a severe strategic blow.

“They just cheated on us,” Putin said of NATO countries. “‘Not an inch to the east’ is what we heard in the 1990s,” the president added.

Putin’s proposal to permanently exclude Ukraine from NATO has already been publicly rejected in Kiev, Brussels and Washington, DC

US soldiers greet the crew of a Ukrainian tank during the “Strong Europe Tank Challenge 2017” in Grafenwoehr, near Eschenbach, southern Germany, on May 12, 2017. A senior Russian diplomat said the The United States and its Western allies were to blame for this disastrous state of relations between NATO and Moscow. CHRISTOF STACHE / AFP via Getty Images

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