The Russians actions on Ukraine and other countries in its vicinity has put us at the brink or within the next cold war. We are all aware of the recent crisis which sparked tensions between the west and the east. This was Russia’s annexation of Crimea in Ukraine. This act by Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin to gain political power started hostility between the countries that are involved in NATO and UN.
Russia’s annexation of Crimea created tensions between countries which resulted in the United States and NATO to deploy special operations near the Russian Border. With these tensions mounting other countries have worked towards protecting their own countries. Russia is economically weak, deprived of foreign investment, beset by capital flight, and almost wholly dependent for cash on energy exports at a time when the international oil price is dropping. Insiders said, “Russia’s actions in Ukraine are more a show of weakness and fear. This is not expansionism, this is insecurity.”
Russia’s insecurity is later shown with evidence of espionage. These auguries of a rising confrontation between Russia and the west are not hard to find. A recent report by the European Leadership Network said close military encounters have jumped to cold war levels, with 40 dangerous or sensitive incidents recorded in the past eight months. Sweden recently launched a full-scale naval operation to hunt down a mini-submarine, assumed to be Russian, trespassing inside its coastal waters. The submarine was not found as the Swedish were unwilling to search deeper in the water. If the submarine was found it could have sparked a bigger crisis. Other governments in the Baltic region have similar worries. In August, Finland scrambled US-made Hornet fighter jets when Russian aircraft illegally entered Finnish airspace on three separate occasions in one week. A Finnish research vessel was also harassed.
In an interview with the Guardian. Sauli Niinisto, Finland’s president, added his voice to the chorus warning that the world was “at the gates of a new kind of cold war”. These acts of violence created by insecurity has put the world at the brink of a new cold war.
