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

 

The Russian president believes a new Cold War is unlikely as no one is interested in it. Vladimir Putin cited Crimea as Moscow’s "reasonable response" to "the language of force" the West was trying to use, but added it should not happen again.


“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.”

'Russia won't just sit on a bench and listen to what others say'

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.
When it comes to cooperation, particularly with the US, Russia will not “just sit on a bench and listen to what others say.”
“This is not the role Russia would agree on,” Putin said, stressing the importance of taking into account partners’ interests. But in bilateral relations there are lines “that can’t be crossed”.T