Press
A Putin friend describes the West’s view of the Ukraine war as “crazy” – and reinterprets the end of the Cold War. The Kremlin says something different.
Moscow – In a TV discussion about the “special military operation” on Russian state television, one person was particularly directed against the West: the Putin-Friend and Mosfilm general director Karen Shakhnazarov. The West is therefore “crazy”. In the discussion about the Ukraine war Is the Cold War also discussed – another sign of the perception as a new Cold War?
Shakhnazarov loudly criticized Finnish President Alexander Stubb Newsweek on the state television station Rossiya 1 TV for his statement that the “only way” to peace is between Russia and the Ukraine “on the battlefield”. “It’s just amazing. Those whose existence was preserved thanks to Russia and who then received their statehood are among the first to chatter,” said moderator Vladimir Solovyov.
According to Solovyov, Russian President Vladimir Putin would continue his operation “despite the dirty noise from the West.” The moderator was already demanding the return of territory from the Soviet Union elsewhere. Russian state television is known for showing threats and extreme theses about the war in Ukraine.
USA without a “foundation in reality”? Putin’s friend sees the Soviet Union as the victor of the Cold War
Shakhnazarov expanded on this and claimed that the USA would have lied with “psychological statements” about victory in the Cold War with Russia. “They genuinely believe they won the Cold War,” the filmmaker said of the United States. “They think they actually won! That’s the psychology of the winner and that’s how they behave.”
“In my opinion it has no basis in reality. The real reasons for the dissolution of the USSR were completely different, they were internal,” Shakhnazarov argued. “If we go back to the Cold War era in the USSR, why did people speak differently to the USSR back then? Because in their eyes the Soviet Union was the winner and they were the losers. In reality, the West lost!”
“Even if America and England formally involved in the anti-Hitler coalition, the West as a whole had lost,” the General Director continued. “We have lost nothing.” Vladimir Putin would probably look at at least the second point differently. Loud Newsweek Putin described the collapse of the Soviet Union on Russian state television in 2021 as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” At the time he said: “We have turned into a completely different country. And what had been built over 1,000 years was largely lost.”
Cold War “never really ended” in post-Soviet states – some see new Cold War
The majority of voters see the collapse of the Soviet Union as the end of the Cold War, although the exact date varies. “It ended in different places at different times. In the post-Soviet space, it never really ended,” said Ukrainian-American historian Serhii Plokhy about the Cold War, according to the “Institute for Human Sciences” in Vienna. After the Cold War, there was further agreement on a bipolar world order and a “security vacuum” emerged because post-Soviet countries had to give up their inherited nuclear weapons.
The head of government of North Korea, Kim Jong Un, according to media reports at the end of 2023, called the situation a “new Cold War”. However, as early as 2021, before the Ukraine war, he spoke of a “transition to a new structure of the Cold War,” according to an article by Chenjun Wang in the online journal “E-International Relations.”
Henry Kissinger Distinguished Professor Hal Brands of Johns Hopkins University said in one Bloombergcolumn called the Ukraine War a kind of “expanded” proxy war that “was completely taken over by both sides.” While in Ukraine many of the NATOcountries, Putin also increasingly looked for allies.
Expert more concerned about nuclear power plants than nuclear weapons – institute warns of lack of communication
When asked about Cold War parallels through Putin’s “nuclear weapons map,” Plokhy replied: “The parallels between the current situation and the Cuban Missile Crisis were drawn before the war.” For him, the parallel is only relevant when NATO missiles are stationed in Ukraine would. You also can’t threaten the entire world “if you don’t have a monopoly on nuclear weapons.” Instead, we have to think about a war “in a world with more than 400 nuclear reactors”.
According to the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security in Great Britain, a new Cold War, potentially over Ukraine, would be more dangerous than the old one because the institutionalized communication mechanisms and constraints would no longer exist. Rationality in nuclear war is not enough, the institute said in May 2022. (lismah)
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