Mikhail Gorbachev warned the latest leaders of the Soviet Union on Thursday of the consequences of rising tension between Russia and the United States and said the Cold War should not return.
Gorbachev's 87-year-old aides helped access a movie theater to watch Russia's premiere of a new documentary about his life, his reforms in the Soviet Union in the 1980s, and his arms control efforts that helped end the Cold War.
"We must refrain from that ... not only from the Cold War, we have to continue the course we have set, we must ban war forever," he said in response to a question about a new Cold War. Of nuclear weapons ".
Many Russians see Gorbachev as the man whose reforms led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, while the West pays tribute to him as the man who helped end the Cold War.
In an opinion piece published last month in the New York Times, he condemned the United States' position after US President Donald Trump said he planned to withdraw from the Treaty on Intermediate Nuclear Powers, which Gorbachev signed with Ronald Reagan in 1987.
"I am convinced that we can stop a new Cold War ... I will do everything for that," Gorbachev said in a pre-written letter read by an assistant in the showroom before the film began. "More dangerous than that would be the return to confrontation and the start of a new arms race. They are already talking about the nuclear war as if it were perfectly acceptable.
