Tensions grow across Europe as Russian president exploits divides in Nato and EU in his efforts for paternalistic world order that rejects western ‘weakness’
The sight of Russian long-range nuclear bombers testing the RAF in the skies off Cornwall has brought home the perils faced daily by the inhabitants of eastern Ukraine and reignited inflammatory talk of a new cold war with Russia.
Against a background of overt and tacit threats to former satellite states, tit-for-tat spy expulsions, high-risk military games of chicken, gas supply cut-offs, and angry diplomatic exchanges, it seems the west is rapidly rewinding to the bad old days of confrontation with Soviet Russia.
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