WASHINGTON, June 6 (RIA Novosti) – It is premature to say that Russia and the West once again plunged into a ‘cold war’, the Ukrainian conflict is a regional rather than a global problem, participants of an expert forum said Thursday in Washington.
"The reason that it [current conflict] isn’t a cold war is that it’s not global and its nature is not ideological," Director of the Center on US and Europe, Brookings Institution Fiona Hill said. The Ukrainian crisis looks more like a regional European crisis, but “not a cold war in a dimension that it was before,” Hill clarified.
Former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs and former US Ambassador to Russia and the UN Thomas R. Pickering shares this view on the problem. The US State department said that the conflict in Ukraine had little influence on the other world problems, in particular in Iran or Syria.
"I think at the moment it doesn’t take at a global proportion," the expert said in the course of the expert forum devoted to the relations between Russia and the West in the context of the events in Ukraine.
"My sense is we need a contact and we need an ability to talk,” the prominent US diplomat suggested. In his opinion, the situation may escalate if the US and the EU will not see Russia making concrete steps in this direction.
Pickering also said that the influence of the economy is widely underrated in this crisis. Noting its ‘horrendous’ state in Ukraine, the diplomat stated that this issue could unite all the sides, whether they are willing to have a dialogue or not.
“This is a time when dealing with an economy can has a useful effect on political moves,” Pickering stressed. The diplomat believes that all parties would rather benefit from Ukraine that is willing to become an "economic bridge" between Russia and the West, rather than Ukraine "at the way to nowhere."
Pickering also stressed the need to “get the weapons out of the picture” in Ukraine as soon as possible.
The Ukrainian crisis is currently heated by the aggressive military operation against independence forces in the country’s southeast. The Kiev’s interim authorities launched the operation in mid-April, all their attempts to break the resistance have so far been futile. The Ukraine’s most affected areas are on the verge of a crisis, with Moscow urging Kiev to stop escalating the conflict.
During his visit to Paris to meet with US Secretary of State John Kerry, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stressed that before dialogue on peaceful co-existence and interaction of all the different regions in Ukraine starts, “it is essential to stop killing civilians.”
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