Tensions “highest since Cold War” as US secretary of state arrives in Moscow
By
Bill Van Auken
12 April 2017
Relations between Washington and Moscow have entered “their worst period since the end of the Cold War,” the Russian Foreign Ministry warned Tuesday in a statement released in connection with the arrival of US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
The threat of a direct clash between the two nuclear-armed powers has been posed in the starkest terms in over half a century following the airstrike last week in which US destroyers fired 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles into a Syrian air base where a Russian unit is stationed.
The Foreign Ministry statement condemned the airstrike, carried out on the pretext of an alleged chemical weapons attack in Syria’s Idlib province on April 4, as “an act of aggression against a sovereign state committed in violation of international law.”
The statement pointedly referred to the string of disastrous US interventions in the Middle East, affirming that Moscow hoped to “learn what the United States will do in Libya, which has been split by NATO’s military intervention, just as Iraq. What plans do our American colleagues have for Yemen, where US weapons are used to bomb cities, killing civilians and aggravating the humanitarian catastrophe?”
The bitter tone of the statement reflected the disillusionment of the government of President Vladimir Putin, which had pinned its hopes on the election of President Donald Trump paving the way for improved relations with Washington and improved conditions on the world stage for the ruling capitalist oligarchy that the Kremlin represents.
Instead, relentless pressure by predominant factions within the US military and intelligence apparatus, amplified by an hysterical anti-Russian…