The first frosts of winter have already dusted the spectacular city of St. Petersburg with a powder of glistening ice . The air outside feels sharp and crisp . Russians hurry along the elegant boulevards , wrapped up tight against the biting cold . Russia 's winter , its annual deep freeze , has begun . But this year there 's more than just a bitter chill in the air . For the past nine months relations with the West have become decidedly frosty too . On the face of it the problem is Ukraine . The West backed a popular uprising there in March , which toppled a Kremlin-friendly government . Infuriated , Russia 's president , Vladimir Putin , annexed the strategic Crimean Peninsula , where it has a key naval base . Since then he has been accused of fuelling a separatist rebellion in the mainly Russian-speaking east of the country . That unrest has already cost more than 4,000 lives . The United States and Europe have imposed costly sanctions and travel bans . It threatens more . On the international stage , Russia has been excluded from the G8 group of industrialized nations . At the recent G20 summit in Brisbane , President Putin was cold-shouldered by his Western counterparts . But the Russian leader appears unmoved , his Ukraine policy unchanged . One fascinating explanation for the failure of Western sanctions and rebukes to change this vast country 's behavior may be in the mindset , the world view , of its strongman president . I 'm one of the few Western journalists to have sat down with Vladimir Putin . I met him at his residence outside Sochi in 2008 , just after Russia 's invasion of Georgia . I asked him back then if he could guarantee that Russian troops would not invade other former Soviet states , like Ukraine . He reacted quite angrily , saying he objected to my question . It was Russians , he said , who should be given guarantees that no one attacks us . The comment sheds light , I think , on how Vladimir Putin sees the world outside the walls of the Kremlin . For him , Russia is under constant threat from the West . NATO expansion into former Eastern Bloc nations has eroded Russia 's security . The prospect of Georgia joining the western military alliance , let alone Ukraine , is unthinkable for him . The Cold War , from this perspective , has never really ended ; we 're still living in the 1980s . The West , in particular the United States , still strives to `` subjugate '' Russia . President Putin repeated this just a few days ago in Moscow . Sanctions are an inevitable consequence of Russia 's resistance to this subjugation . Ukraine was the motive , but if it had not been Ukraine it would likely have been something else . From a Western perspective , this seems like a cynical distortion of the facts , a Kremlin ploy to confuse and obfuscate . But it may help explain why Russia is doing what it is doing , and why sanctions are not changing -- and may never change -- Kremlin policy . It may also help to explain why , at a time of growing economic hardship , Russia 's president remains so utterly popular at home . His world view is theirs too . Like the harsh cold of the coming Russian winter , confrontation with the West is inevitable and must be endured .
Putin accused of fuelling separatist movement in mainly Ukrainian - populated east of Ukraine . On international stage , Russia has been excluded from G8 group of industrialized nations . But Russian president is unmoved , his Ukraine policy unchanged . Putin told CNN 's Second Chance : Russians should be given guarantees no one attacks us .