러시아ㆍ유라시아

Apparently, the collapse of the USSR did not mean the end of the Cold War. It took less than ten years for people trained within the KGB to take over the state management of Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin and his allies showed their skills and views on state management by conducting the second Chechen war, beginning in 1999. Around the same time, Putin asked former US president Bill Clinton his opinion on the possibility of Russia’s membership in NATO. Against the background of Russia’s military actions in Chechnya, this idea sounded bizarre, but today Russian propagandists with imperturbable faces tell the story that Russian leadership had quite serious intentions regarding the rapprochement between Russia and NATO. Putin’s rhetoric about the democratization and liberalization of Russia sounded equally bizarre against the background of crimes in Chechnya, murders, and persecution of journalists. The rhetoric of the Russian authorities about rapprochement with the West was most likely a ploy to buy time and obscure the fact that the Cold War never ended in the minds of those who rule Russia. Russian leadership puts confrontation with the West, above all with the United States, at the core of its foreign policy.