Moscow's Eyes

I mean that.  I mean that Moscow -- look at it through Moscow's eyes. Since the Clinton administration in the 1990s, the U.S.-led West has been on a steady march toward post-Soviet Russia, began with the expansion of NATO in the 1990s under Clinton.  Bush then further expanded NATO all the way to Russia's borders.  Then came the funding of what are euphemistically called NGOs, but they are political action groups, funded by the West, operating inside Russia.  Then came the decision to build missile defense installations along Russia's borders, allegedly against Iran, a country which has neither nuclear weapons nor any missiles to deliver them with. Then comes American military outpost in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, which led to the war of 2008, and now the West is at the gates of Ukraine.  So, that's the picture as Moscow sees it.  And it's rational. It's reasonable.  It's hard to deny.

-- Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University, in an interview on Democracy Now, 20 February 2014