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The Sunday Times foreign editor Peter Conradi argues that the West has made a powerful new enemy in Russia because it has consistently failed to understand the country and its motives.

Conradi says that Russia emerged battered and humiliated from the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, and there are striking parallels with post-World-War-I Weimar Germany. Now a new Russia has emerged with an upgraded arsenal of weapons and a determination to assert its interests in places such as Chechnya, Georgia and Ukraine. Meanwhile, NATO is undertaking large-scale manoeuvres and stockpiling weapons close to the Russian border.

Conradi witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union first-hand as a foreign correspondent in Moscow. He is also author of Hitler’s Piano Player and co-author of The King’s Speech, which inspired the Oscar-winning film.