MOSCOW: Russia’s foreign intelligence agency chief Sergei Naryshkin said on Wednesday that Washington’s actions toward Russia mean its possible to start speaking of a return to the Cold War era.
“Washington has become fixated with the fight against a non-existent, so-called Russian threat. This has reached such proportions and acquired such absurd characteristics that it’s possible to speak of a return to the dark times of the Cold War,” the spy chief said, speaking at a security conference in Moscow.
Relations between Russia and the West have declined significantly owing to Russian intervention in Syria, the annexation of Crimea and the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US Presidential Elections.
Most recently, the poisoning of a former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia Skripal in the UK sparked a diplomatic row that saw the expulsions of hundreds of Russian diplomats from primarily European countries.
Russia responded with a tit-for-tat move, declaring a number of diplomats to be ‘persona non grata’ and closing down the operations of the British Council in Russia.
