US and Russia have entered a Cold War, says Russian ex-general - Reuters and Israel Hayom Staff

by Reuters and Israel Hayom Staff

Countries are "teetering on the brink of war, but without the mechanisms to manage the confrontation," Lt. Gen. Evgeny Buzhinsky tells British Telegraph • U.S. secretary of state voices concern to Russian FM about renewed fighting, airstrikes in Aleppo.

Russian President Vladimir Putin shakes hands with U.S. President Barack Obama in 2012 | Photo credit: Reuters

Russia and the United States are engaging in a new Cold War that could lead to growing confrontations across the globe, according to military and foreign policy experts in Moscow, the British Telegraph has reported.

According to the warnings, Russia and the U.S.-led West are headed for a standoff as dangerous as the Cuban missile crisis.

"If we talk about the last Cold War, we are currently somewhere between the erection of the Berlin Wall and the Cuban missile crisis," Lt. Gen. Evgeny Buzhinsky, a former head of the Russian Defense Ministry's international treaties department and now head of PIR Center, a Moscow think tank, told the Telegraph.

"In other words," Buzhinsky said, "teetering on the brink of war, but without the mechanisms to manage the confrontation."

The Russian Foreign Ministry on Saturday accused the Obama administration of attempting the "final destruction of relations with Russia."

On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry voiced concern to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov about renewed fighting and airstrikes in the Syrian city of Aleppo after a break of several days, the U.S. State Department said.

Lavrov and Kerry discussed the situation in Syria in a phone call and agreed that experts from several countries meeting in Geneva would continue searching for ways to resolve the Aleppo crisis, the State Department and Russia's Foreign Ministry said.

Lavrov told Kerry that the U.S. must fulfill its obligation to separate moderate opposition groups from "terrorists" in Syria, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The geographic proximity between moderate Syrian rebels and groups considered terrorist by Russia and the United States was one factor in the failure last month of a cease-fire negotiated by Moscow and Washington.

"They talked about the importance of the continued multilateral discussions in Geneva and how ... to get a meaningful cessation of hostilities and the delivery of humanitarian aid," State Department spokesman John Kirby said of Kerry and Lavrov.

Kirby noted that humanitarian aid had still not made it through to people under siege in Aleppo, despite the pause in fighting.

Asked whether the multilateral talks on Syria in Geneva had made progress, Kirby said only that the dialogue was "ongoing" and he had nothing further to report.

Meanwhile, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov warned that Moscow would retaliate in kind if the U.S. goes ahead with new sanctions against Russia in response to the bombing of Aleppo.

The Telegraph reported that the Kremlin has already made a decision to cut off diplomacy at least until after the U.S. elections on Nov. 8, in the hope of striking up a more "sincere" relationship with Obama's successor.

Reuters and Israel Hayom Staff

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=37359

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