> The Cold War is over.

I would have agreed literally with that statement fifteen years ago. Since then, however, the trends in Russia towards state control over independent press, the politicisation of sports and culture, the blurring of lines not to be crossed (e.g. the annexation of Crimea) and overall clinching of Kremlin power at all costs have made lots of people in Europe worried.

I also wouldn't say "Russia is the enemy", for a number of reasons: first of all, it's not true; secondly, it's not helpful; and thirdly, it obviously breeds distrust and antagonism not only between states but between individual people.

But tensions have obviously been rising, and we are not in the pleasant situation we saw 20 years ago when Russia seemed to be heading towards democracy and increased international cooperation. The current regime in Russia, with its increasingly authoritarian and nationalistic pursuits and somewhat erratic foreign politics, has certainly been feeding those tensions. It would be disingenuous to claim it hasn't.

Exactly; when there was a clash of civilizations between a free west and a repressive soviet union; it made sense that Russia was the enemy.

Now it is just a conflict between different European powers with varying levels of dysfunctional democracy and corrupt elites.

So what is the basis for hating the Russians now; racism?

Russia's whole political culture is the one of conquest. Their ambition was pretty much always to conquer as much of Europe and Asia as possible, and the mindset haven't changed in XXI century - neither among elites nor among common folk. They're still pretty much a typical XIX century empire, they didn't yet go the shift to focusing on economic domination that UK, Germany, US, Japan went through since.

Yeah I’m fine with framing it like this. It’s just run of the mill geopolitical conflict. Calling Russians “the enemy” today is just shallow and lazy.

Putin and his policy of destabilization of the West, from financing Brexit supporters, to poisoning his political opponents.

Russians are not the enemy, Russia is the enemy.

And this is based on Putin's foreign policy towards smaller neighbors that it historically controlled.

Russia still wants to dominate Eastern Europe and must be opposed. The US is an excellent partner in that, much better than Western EU.