Russian PM: West Rekindling the Cold War

Russia’s prime minister accused the West on Saturday of rekindling the Cold War, telling a meeting of top defense officials, diplomats and national leaders that sanctions imposed after the annexation of Crimea and new moves by the NATO alliance “only aggravate” tensions.
Russian PM: West Rekindling the Cold War
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev at the 2016 Munich Security Conference at the Bayerischer Hof Hotel in Munich, Germany, on Feb. 13, 2016. Lennart Preiss/Getty Images
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MUNICH—Russia’s prime minister accused the West on Saturday of rekindling the Cold War, telling a meeting of top defense officials, diplomats and national leaders that sanctions imposed after the annexation of Crimea and new moves by the NATO alliance “only aggravate” tensions.

Dmitry Medvedev said Russian President Vladimir Putin told the same Munich Security Conference in 2007 that the West’s building of a missile defense system risked restarting the Cold War, and that now “the picture is more grim; the developments since 2007 have been worse than anticipated.”

NATO's policies related to Russia remain unfriendly and opaque—one could go so far as to say we have slid back to a new Cold War.
Dmitry Medvedev, prime minister, Russia