Russian Envoy: Washington Still Haunted by the Ghost of Soviet Union

Moscow’s envoy in Washington, D.C. Anatoly Antonov told Newsweek this weekend that the United States is using the war in Ukraine to fulfill its decades-long goal of weakening Russia.

Ambassador Antonov remarked that Washington seems to need to constantly assert itself through competition with Russia, noting that Washington’s support for Ukraine is motivated by a Cold War-era desire to weaken Russia and make Europe its subordinate.

The Russian Ambassador to Washington gave a statement to the American magazine a week after the fresh $275 million arms package for Ukraine announced by Pentagon, whose most recent National Defense Strategy mandates that the US military equip itself to prevail in conflict against Russia if deterrence fails, describing Moscow as an acute threat to US interests.

Antonov pointed out that it looks as if the Сold War has not ended at all and if the corridors of power in the American capital – in which many politicians still think and act according to the laws of that historical period – are still haunted by the ghost of the Soviet Union.

Those politicians, according to Antonov, believe that Russia’s restored international prestige since Putin is at its helm has become a headache for Washington, which uses the conflict in Ukraine to better place itself in a position to implement its, as he describes it, ‘idee fixe’ to weaken Russia.

According to the Russian Ambassador, the US not only finds it easier to consolidate the society – just as the entire Western camp – around the imagined foreign enemy that undermines the values of the democratic world but is, at the same time, using Russia’s war in Ukraine to justify its unprecedented military spending and make Europe fully dependent on Washington while ruining its mutually beneficial ties with Moscow.

Antonov, however, told Newsweek that he can foresee the emergence of a new multipolar world in which Russia advocates taking into account the interests of all participants in the future system of international relations, although, at first glance, it may appear that Americans are winning everywhere.