Putin: I don’t think new Cold War will start, no one wants it

Russian President Vladimir Putin believes there will be no new Cold War as no one is interested in it.
“I really would not like to think that this is a beginning of a new Cold War,” he said speaking with the heads of the world media at St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. “I think this is not going to happen.”
The ‘new Cold War’ rhetoric has been rife in the West as the situation around the Ukrainian crisis becomes increasingly tense.
Those who provoked the armed coup in Ukraine should have thoroughly weighed up the consequences that would follow, Putin stressed.

“Those who had been provoking the armed coup in Kiev should have thought, if they were real professionals, about the consequences of their illegal ambitions,” he said, adding that he hopes that what happened in Ukraine “will become a precedent which has its own negative consequences, but still would revive a conscientious attitude to international law and practice of agreeing positions based on each other’s interests,” rather than “methods of using force.”
Touching on Russia's actions towards Crimea, Putin said it was a reasonable response on the part of Russia.
“We think that [the West] tried to talk to us in the language of force, and we, using the same logic, gave a reasonable answer. But I hope that this will never, under any circumstances, happen again anywhere,” Putin said.
As for the Western sanctions against Russia, “I think that they are absolutely counterproductive, not based on a fair attitude to existing problems, and driven by a desire to impose on Russia international relations developments that do not correspond either with international law or with mutual interests. They certainly do not correspond with Russian interests,” Putin said.
In fact, he stressed, “Some events which happened in Ukraine threaten Russia’s interests, first of all in terms of national security.”
Putin particularly referred to NATO’s intensified activities and possible Ukraine’s acceptance to the alliance.
“This could have been followed by not only acceptance, but also deployment of assault systems on the territory of Ukraine, including Crimea,” he said. “If this had happened, it would have had serious geopolitical consequences for Russia; our country would have been forced out from the Black Sea region, and Russia has been fighting for centuries for the legitimate right to a presence there.”
[rt.com]
24/5/14
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