Russia: U.S. seeks new Cold War
Country’s top officials accuse West of putting stability at risk
MOSCOW — Top Russian defense and security officials on Wednesday launched diatribes at the West, accusing it of fomenting a new Cold War to retain waning influence.
Moscow used an annual security conference attended by defense officials from Asia, Africa and Latin America to criticize the U.S. and its allies, accusing them of putting global stability at risk.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu accused the U.S. and its NATO allies of using “the non-existent Russian threat to methodically boost their military potential” and beef up their forces near Russia’s borders.
Shoigu emphasized that the U.s.led missile defense program has become a “major destabilizing factor inciting an arms race.”
He pointed at a growing number of NATO intelligence flights near Russia’s borders and an increasing pace of NATO’S military drills, noting that they have “a clear anti-russian character.”
“The danger of provocations and military incidents has significantly increased,” Shoigu said.
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, differences over the war in Syria and the allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Shoigu said NATO has stonewalled Moscow’s attempts to engage in a dialogue, adding that “we aren’t going to knock on the closed door, but will not leave attempts to apply pressure on us unattended.”
Russia-west tensions further escalated this month after the poisoning of an ex-russian spy in Britain, leading to mass diplomats’ expulsions.
Sergei Naryshkin, the director of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, told the conference that the attack on the ex-spy was a “grotesque provocation rudely staged by the British and U.S. intelligence agencies.” British and U.S. officials have previously rejected similar Russian allegations.
“Washington has become fixated on fighting the non-existent Russian threat, and that fight has reached such a scale and acquired such absurd traits that we can talk about the return of the gloomy times of the Cold War,” Naryshkin said.