“The U.S. may think it’s winning in Ukraine but it cannot stop the inexorable shift to a new world order.” That was the theme of Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Anatoly Antonov’s interview with Newsweek published Dec. 17, in which Newsweek’s editors felt compelled to sprinkle with spin supporting the anti-Russia narrative: (https://washington.mid.ru/en/press-centre/news/ambassador_anatoly_antonov_exclusively_for_the_newsweek_russian_envoy_says_it_may_seem_u_s_winning_b/ )
“Washington seems to need to constantly assert itself through competition with Russia,” Antonov said. “It looks as if the ‘ghost’ of the Soviet Union is still haunting the corridors of power in the American capital, and the ‘Cold War’ has not ended at all.”
He added: “Many politicians here still think and act according to the laws of that historical period. They believe that restoration of Russia’s international prestige with Vladimir Putin’s accession to power in our country has become a ‘headache’ for Washington….
“With the conflict in Ukraine the United States is better placed to implement its idée fixe to weaken Russia,” Antonov said. “It is much easier to consolidate society within the United States and in the Western camp as a whole around the image of a ‘foreign enemy that undermines the values of the democratic world.’”
He continued: “At the same time, one can always shift the blame for its own problems and miscalculations onto the Russian Federation and use Russia to justify its unprecedented military spending. In addition, under the pretext of the developments in Ukraine, the administration is ruining mutually beneficial ties between Russia and Europe, making the latter fully dependent on Washington.”
Antonov asserted that it could be easy to view the U.S. as succeeding over Russia amid their rivalry. “At first glance, it may appear that Americans are ‘winning’ everywhere and at the cost of the lives of Ukrainian soldiers, [retaining] their own ‘leadership,’” Antonov said. “They hope in this way to maintain dominance in the world stage, which someone dared to challenge for the first time in a long time.”
“However,” he added. “Things are different.” Beyond the intensive feud between Moscow and Washington, Antonov said that “it is clear that we are at the beginning of a complex and long journey of building a multi-polar world,” one in which “the Russian Federation advocates that the interests of all participants should be taken into account in the future system of international relations, and that new centers of development in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East could have an equal impact on global processes together with Russia and the United States.” And he argued that “our proposals find more and more understanding and support in various regions of the planet.”
