Interfax: Ukraine crisis caused by USSR’s “reckless” dismantling – Gorbachev

(Interfax – Moscow, December 30, 2014) Former USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev believes that the world was on the brink of a major disaster in 2014.

In an interview with Interfax he said this concerned not just relations between Russia and Ukraine, Russia and the European Union, but events in global politics as a whole.

As for relations between Ukraine and the EU, Gorbachev continued, “from the very beginning I was concerned about the fact that this problem was being viewed out of alignment with another issue that is just as important – how it will affect Ukraine’s relations with Russia”.

According to Gorbachev, the Ukraine crisis could have been prevented. “To do that, political leaders wanted to find a mechanism for negotiations and coordination, in order to align the internal triangle of ‘Russia-Ukraine-EU’ while taking account of each side’s position. Unfortunately, that has not been done,” Gorbachev said.

Gorbachev noted that “the profound reason of the events in Ukraine lies in the thoughtless and reckless dismantling of the USSR from the inside”. “Politicians’ past mistakes are always connected to the present by a multitude of threads, and last year confirmed this consistent pattern,” he said.

According to Gorbachev, Western leaders “should stop trying to pull Ukraine into NATO”. He believes that national accord in Ukraine can only be reached if “the interests of all nations, social strata and regions are taken into account”.