The Cold War is Back

Pat Buchanan writes:

In a Kremlin speech last week, President Vladimir Putin identified Russia’s real “enemy” in Ukraine as “the ruling circles of the so-called West” whose “hegemony has a pronounced character of totalitarianism, despotism and apartheid.”

In the West, Putin declaimed, “The repression of freedom is taking on the outlines of a reverse religion, of real Satanism,” which, on issues like gender identity, amounts to a “denial of man.”

Putin then formally annexed the occupied Ukrainian regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson and pledged to defend these new Russian territories with “all the forces and means at our disposal.”

He suggested that those means included nuclear weapons, for which the Americans “created a precedent” at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Reading Putin’s excoriation, it is hard to recall, in four decades of Cold War, or the three decades since, a speech of such relentless vitriol and hostility toward the West.

RT reports:

Sustainable peace in Europe may only be achieved if Russia is part of it, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday.

Speaking during the 77th anniversary of the German newspaper ‘Suddeutsche Zeitung,’ Merkel explained that while the West has been adamant in its support for Ukraine as the nation remains locked in conflict with Russia, it should also keep its mind open about what might seem as “unthinkable” now – Moscow’s future role in Europe’s affairs.

She stressed that “a future European security architecture within international law will meet the requirements” only if it involves Russia. “As long as we haven’t achieved that, the Cold War is not really over either,” she added.

Merkel is saying the obvious, but I don't think our leaders want to end the Cold War.

RT reports:

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky insisted that his remarks about preemptive NATO nuclear strikes on Russia had been mistranslated. He really meant “preventive kicks,” he told the BBC in an interview that aired on Friday, with the British state broadcaster interpreting this as referring to sanctions.

“I said you have to do preventive kicks, not attacks,” Zelensky told BBC’s John Simpson.

Okay, I guess I feel better, but Ukraine has now bombed the Crimea Bridge, and car-bombed the daughter of a Russian civilian in Russia. Zelensky seems to want World War III.

Here is an argument that Russia is not the aggressor in Ukraine. It starts by quoting:

“We are not threatening anyone.… We have made it clear that any further NATO movement to the east is unacceptable. There’s nothing unclear about this. We aren’t deploying our missiles to the border of the United States, but the United States IS deploying their missiles to the porch of our house. Are we asking too much? We’re just asking that they not deploy their attack-systems to our home…. What is so hard to understand about that?” Russian President Vladimir Putin,

I do not know who is the aggressor here, and I do not care. My concern is that the USA and NATO countries are escalating the war to a wider conflict that will affect us all.

Here is Claire Daly saying that the people of Europe have nothing to gain from the Ukraine War. I think she is right, and the eagerness for war is alarming.