Will Vladimir Putin turn the Second Cold War into a hot one?

And then, lifeless air. On Thursday, Putin spent the day paying a solemn public go to to Piskaryovskoye Memorial Cemetery to mark the anniversary of the lifting of the Siege of Leningrad, the Soviet-era identify for St. Petersburg, laying flowers at a frequent grave that accommodates the stays of his elder brother, Viktor, who died as an toddler throughout the blockade.

While Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov supplied a few curt assessments of the letter -- saying the Russians had "no positive reaction" on the principal sticking level, the Kremlin's name for a halt to additional NATO enlargement to the East -- it was clear that the world must await a more fulsome response from Putin. And Putin can wait. While Western leaders have labored themselves into a lather over the Ukraine disaster, Putin is a man who faces little or no home political stress. His political opposition has been sidelined or put in jail, he has a pliant state media and does not have to consider any re-election marketing campaign in the close to future. He doesn't need to seek the advice of with an unruly parliament on overseas affairs. That makes him the man to speak to. On Friday, French President Emmanuel Macron held a cellphone name with Putin on the Ukraine disaster, with the Elysée saying Putin informed Macron that "he was the only one he could have such a deep discussion with." The Kremlin abstract of the name signaled Putin's dissatisfaction with responses from the US and NATO, saying the letters "did not take into account such fundamental concerns of Russia as preventing NATO expansion, refusing to deploy strike weapons systems near Russian borders, as well as returning the military strength and infrastructure of the [NATO] bloc in Europe to the positions of 1997," however the assertion gave little indication how and when Putin deliberate to reply formally.On Monday, State Department officers stated they'd "received a written follow-up from Russia," however on Tuesday the Kremlin stated there had been a "mixup" over the challenge, insisting that Russia has but to ship its "main reply" to the US. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stated the correspondence from Russia "regarded a different matter. The main reply ... hasn't been handed over, it's still being prepared."Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan made a separate bid to have interaction Putin, inviting the Russian president to attend a summit and providing to mediate between Russia and Ukraine. The Kremlin stated Putin had accepted, relying on the decision of the "epidemiological situation," and no date has been fastened -- though Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu informed reporters Thursday he had been knowledgeable by the Kremlin it will likely be after Putin returns from the Beijing Olympic Games that begin on February 4. So does Putin maintain all the playing cards? Will he bide his time by the Winter Olympics, the place he will likely be a visitor of Chinese President Xi Jinping? Is he an skilled tactician, or a poor strategist? Divining Putin's grasp plan could also be a pastime for pundits, however the Russian President has made his intentions very clear for a very very long time. One needn't learn Putin's thoughts. His phrases communicate for themselves.

Back in 2007, Putin laid out his principal grievances at the Munich Security Forum. His argument? The enlargement of the NATO alliance to incorporate former members of the Warsaw Pact and the Baltic States was an act of aggression directed at Russia. "I think it is obvious that NATO expansion does not have any relation with the modernization of the Alliance itself or with ensuring security in Europe," he stated. "On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: Against whom is this expansion intended?" And then there was the stationing of US missile protection belongings in Europe. In Putin's view, missile protection -- which Washington billed as a counter to rogue states similar to Iran and North Korea -- was really designed to undercut Russia's nuclear deterrent. More ominously, Putin stated this: "I am confident that the historians of the future will not describe our conference as one in which the Second Cold War was declared. But they could." That battle -- name it Cold War Lite, or Cold War 2.0 -- has steadily gained momentum since then, by successive crises: Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the battle in Donbas; the Kremlin's intervention in Syria's civil battle in 2015; Russian meddling in the 2016 US election; the 2018 Salisbury poisonings in England; and so forth. Putin additionally constructed a rationale for battle in the summer time when he revealed a 5,000-word historic essay, arguing, in essence, that Ukrainians and Russians had been a single nation. Independent Ukraine, in his view, was an "artificial division" of two peoples -- and due to this fact not a actual state. Kremlin spokesperson Peskov has stated Putin and his authorities "will not rush to judgements." Now that the Second Cold War is threatening to turn into a very hot one, the world should wait to see if Putin's subsequent transfer alerts a turn for the worse in international affairs.