The source of the new cold war between Russia and the West is in Russia's refusal to accept the Western model of developent, Alexander Rahr, a German political analyst told ArmInfo in an online interview organized by the Region Research Center.
"Naturally, this new war is not as horrific as the real cold war. The West is sure that it won the last cold war and Russia lost it, eventually. The West believes that the Soviet Union had wrong morals and that the Soviet Union was the West's enemy and an empire of evil for many," Rahr said in response to the question whether the publics in Russia and the NATO countries still think in the "cold war" terms.
Rahr believes that under this psychology, the West has set conditions to Russia as the legal successor of the USSR since 90s of the last century: a full democratization and acknowledgement of the West's liberal values. A new wave of the West-Russia confrontation started much earlier than the Ukraine crisis broke out. It started when it became clear that Russia refuses to accept the Western model of development, the expert believes.