Russia: New Cold War is Over, We Are Now in ‘Hot Conflict With the United States’

The United States is “playing with fire” and engaged in a hot “hybrid war” with Russia, having already graduated from the Cold War stage, a Russian government minister has claimed, incredibly even going so far as to blame the U.S. for rising nuclear tensions.

The new Cold War is already over, a Kremlin spokesman has said, apparently looking past Russia’s own role in invading Ukraine and accusing the United States of “playing with fire” by pushing the world towards nuclear war that he insists Russians wish to avoid.

The comments come just hours after Russia announced it had deployed nuclear-capable missiles to the borders of NATO in Belarus, and refitted Belarussian jets with the equipment to carry and drop nuclear bombs. Moscow made a tacit accusation that the United States was to blame for this, saying Russia was doing no more than America already did, in stationing nuclear weapons in the territory of European allies.

Speaking Wednesday, Russia’s deputy foreign minister Sergey Ryabkov made the ‘hot war’ comments and said, per a release on his discussion from a government-controlled news and propaganda service: “I think we have already passed this period [of Cold War]. Now we are in the phase of a hot conflict with the United States. We are witnessing the direct involvement of that country in a hybrid war with Russia on various fronts”.

While blame is generally laid at Russia’s door for invading Ukraine, the minister insisted it was in fact the U.S. that was pushing the world towards nuclear war and that Russia was the peaceful party trying to avoid such an exchange. Expressing this, Ryabkov postulated: “…there can be no winners in a nuclear war and that it must not be unleashed.

“But the way our American opponents are recklessly, provocatively, and in many respects absolutely carelessly moving up the escalation ladder, the way they are blinded by their absolutely absurd certainty about their ability to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia makes one doubt their mental faculties and their common sense.”

The U.S. is “playing with fire” and was risking making “fatal mistakes”, Ryabkov said, saying the Russian Federation “will be ready to take all measures and to use all means at our disposal” if there were attempts to encroach on their sovereignty.

Russia has increased its bluster over their rights as a sovereign nation in recent months as NATO has become more directly involved in supporting Ukraine, but has skirted around its own role in invading another sovereign country, referring to the war euphemistically as a necessary “special military operation”.

The United States, for their part have reflected on the effectiveness of the Russian military after the invasion appeared to fail in its original dash to capture territory and quickly got bogged down. Speaking this week, a Pentagon spokesman said of that: “I think we’ve certainly seen failures that the Russian military has not been able to execute on the battlefield and failures in their command-and-control.”