He regularly called on the Kremlin and the White House to talk, meet and agree to ensure global security and reduce their arsenals, as he did in the 1980s with then-US President Ronald Reagan.
Mikhail Gorbachev was the last living leader of the Cold War era, a period whose echoes have been particularly felt since current Russian President Vladimir Putin’s large-scale offensive in Ukraine, launched on February 24.
Before his death, Mikhail Gorbachev had not spoken publicly regarding this conflict of unprecedented violence in Europe since the Second World War, decried in the West as a resurgence of Russian imperialism. In recent weeks, the Russian media had mentioned the former leader’s recurring health problems.
