While some scholars accept the end of the Second World War in 1945 as the starting point of the Cold War, others think it started with the “Long Telegram” sent by US diplomat George F. Kennan in 1946 from Moscow to the US. Kennan’s analysis was one of the factors that influenced Washington’s containment policy for the next half-century. When British Prime Minister Winston Churchill famously made reference to the “Iron Curtain” descending across Central and Eastern Europe during his speech in Fulton, Missouri on March 5, 1946, the imagery stuck, and Russian historians cite Churchill’s speech as the starting date of the Cold War.