Richard Sakwa

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis. Just 90 miles from the American mainland, the attempt by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to place missiles on the island represented a fundamental threat to US security. He was responding to the US placement of Jupiter nuclear missiles in Turkey, which was seen as a fundamental threat to Soviet security. Today, Russian forces on Ukraine’s border are responding to what the Kremlin sees as a similar existential menace. In both cases, genuine concerns have been mixed with posturing and ill-advised escalation. We find ourselves in a new Cold War and a slow-motion escalation comparable to the Cuban missile crisis.

Around 100,000 Russian troops are currently massed on the Ukrainian border. Talk of an invasion fills the air. British intelligence claims President Putin is planning to install a Kremlin-friendly leader in Kiev. For the first time in at least a generation, there is the real prospect of war in Europe. It is easy for politicians in the West to talk about ‘Russian aggression’. What else is a massive build-up of troops if not an aggressive posture? But Russia is acting because its leadership feels threatened. From the high towers of the Kremlin, Ukraine looks like an increasingly hostile, American-backed Potemkin state. It was not always this way. In the decade following the collapse of the USSR, the newly created Russian Federation had sought western integration.