The political scientist spoke about the heated ideological confrontation between Russia and the United States

Political scientist Sharikov: escalation between Russia and the United States is a consequence of philosophical confrontation

Photo: Alexey Vitvitsky / RIA Novosti

Recently, the ideological and philosophical confrontation between Russia and the United States has escalated, which resulted in the last round of escalation. About this in an interview with “Lenta.” was told by Pavel Sharikov, head of the Center for Applied Research at the Institute of the USA and Canada of the Russian Academy of Sciences and an expert of the Valdai Club.

According to the political scientist, with the end of the cold war and over the past 20-30 years, serious transformations have taken place in the world. The USA went one way, Europe went the other. Separately, a kind of “buffer zones” have emerged, like Eastern Europe, the Baltic States and Poland, which, although moving in a similar direction to the rest of Europe, are not 100 percent in solidarity with it. “For the Russian leadership, this is chaos, and the attempt to find some kind of pivot in this chaos is precisely to impose certain obligations on the United States as the main enemy – not to accept Ukraine into NATO and so on,” Sharikov said.

Amid the heated situation around Ukraine, US Deputy Secretary of State Karen Donfrid visited Moscow on December 15. During the negotiations, the Russian side gave her concrete proposals on the development of guarantees to ensure Russia’s security, which she soon made public. Moscow, in particular, demanded from Washington legal guarantees against further expansion of NATO to the east, from joining the bloc of Ukraine and from the creation of military bases in post-Soviet countries.

In early January, Russia held talks with the United States and NATO on draft agreements. On January 26, Washington and the alliance provided written responses to Moscow’s proposals.