Last Soviet leader Gorbachev urges Russia, U.S. to hold nuclear talks
Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, warned on Friday that the world was drifting into a dangerous era of militarised politics and appealed to Moscow and Washington to sit down for urgent nuclear arms control talks.
Gorbachev, whose 1980s arms control push and democracy-oriented reforms helped end the Cold War, made the comments to the daily newspaper Izvestia two months after the demise of a landmark nuclear pact he signed in 1987.
"There are dangerous trends - they are all in plain sight. I would single out two. They are the disregard for international law and the militarisation of world politics," Gorbachev said.
U.S. President Donald Trump's administration formally pulled out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) in August, accusing Moscow of violating it.
