Dmitry Peskov, Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, said on Saturday that he was sure there would be no "Cold War" in connection with Ukraine. "With all our soul, we hope that both ourselves and our partners have enough political wisdom, feelings of political realism, to avoid sliding into an even deeper confrontation - ideological or otherwise - because of Ukraine," Peskov said in an interview with the television channel Ren-TV.
Peskov said that Russia and the West were economically co-dependent, criticising suggestions by economists that Russia was capable of self-isolation. "This would be illogical, unrealistic and absurd at the present time, in the age of globalisation, in the age of absolute economic co-dependence," he said. "We are interested in the development of co-operation, and we wouldn't like what is happening in Ukraine to have the opposite effect," Peskov said.