Dear CCI Friends and Colleagues,
A Russian whom we Americans love and respect, President Mikhail Gorbachev, spoke out yesterday. His health is in a precarious place and has been for some time, but speaking out on the state of our world seems to give him the impetus to stay alive till now.
In September just passed we had an appointment with President Gorbachev which he was unable to keep due to his condition that day. His devoted interpreter and friend for over 40 years, Pavel Palazhchenko, met with us for two hours shortly thereafter. Our ageing hero is rarely able to keep appointments these days, but even so, still sends out strong messages. His insistence is that we Americans and Russians MUST resurrect our former good relations; or else humanity may cease to exist.
Below is his latest message and following it are several other URL’s delivered in the past few days. Study them and think seriously with us what we can do to get Gorbachev’s messages out to our American friends who don’t take seriously the imminent danger in which we now find ourselves.
Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Gorbachev: Nuclear Weapons Putting World In ‘Colossal Danger’
Mikhail Gorbachev speaks during the presentation of his book at a bookstore in Moscow in October 2017. (Vasily Maksimov AFP)
November 4, 2019
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has warned that the current standoff between Russia and the West is putting the world in “colossal danger” due to the threat from nuclear weapons.
In an interview with the BBC published on November 4, Gorbachev called for all countries to declare that nuclear weapons “must be destroyed” in order to “save ourselves and our planet.”
“As far as weapons of mass destruction exist, primarily nuclear weapons, the danger is colossal,” he said.
The 88 year-old Gorbachev sat down slowly at the start of the interview and spoke deliberately at times in the handful of brief clips that were interspersed with other material in the BBC’s video report.
The interview comes three decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, amid hints of a return of the Cold War.
Asked to describe the current tensions between Moscow and the West, Gorbachev said, “Chilly, but still a war.”
Fears of a renewed nuclear arms race have heightened since both the United States and Russian this year withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty that was signed by Gorbachev and U.S. President Ronald Reagan in 1987.
Based on reporting by the BBC
Copyright (c) 2019. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.