Cnadian CBC News publihed today a lengthy Q&A with Ben Judah, a specialist on contemporary Russian politics, entitled "Snowden, Syria, Vladimir Putin's 'Cold Peace' with the West."
The writer was asked to comment on the Russian-American relations, situation with Snowden and was asked if the Russian-American "sour relationship really tantamount to "a new Cold War," as some analysts in the West have suggested.
"British writer Ben Judah believes the relationship is more nuanced than that, but also feels that Western leaders would do well to familiarize themselves more carefully with a Russia that is more fragile than it seems," the article reads.
"What he sees is a Russia that is rife with crippling corruption, and transforming irrevocably because of a new generation of post-Soviet young people with no living memory of the former Soviet Union and its culture of fear," the journalist writes.
"This is the Cold Peace. Russia and the West have neither become true friends nor real enemies under the reign of Vladimir Putin," Judah is quoted as saying.
He also noted that "Putin has a harsh, cruel view of the world and the struggle between states. He is a Russian "realist," disdaining the "idealist" approach to foreign policy he thinks misguided his predecessors Yeltsin, Gorbachev and the preachers of Communism... For Putin, international relations is a dog eat dog world."
