When the Soviet Union unraveled 25 years ago, the then President, Mikael Gorbachev, hoped that Western countries would come to their rescue.
But it didn’t happen. Had the United States and its allies offered financial support at the time,the world could have been very different and been a far safer place, thinks 85 year oldGorbachev today.
‘They just rubbed their hands and said ‘good riddance’, he says.
Bitter
Gorbachev played a key role in ending the Cold War, by implementing liberal reforms, dismantling the nuclear arsenal and allowing Eastern European countries to break with Moscow.
For this, he was rewarded with the 1990 Nobel Prize, but is now bitter that Western countries did not to a greater extent grasp the opportunity and embrace his so-calledperestrojkapolitikk’.
‘The West appeared rather ‘triumphant’ when the Soviet Union unraveled, and so, this triumphantring has always characterised relations between Russia and the West’, said Gorbachev.
Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today
