Gorbachev: We're Facing 'New Cold War'

Tensions between the major powers have pushed the world closer to a new Cold War, former Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev said today. The 83-year-old accused the West, particularly the United States, of giving in to "triumphalism" after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the communist bloc a quarter-century ago. The result, he said, could partly be seen in the inability of global powers to prevent or resolve conflicts in Yugoslavia, the Middle East, and, most recently, Ukraine.

"The world is on the brink of a new Cold War. Some are even saying that it's already begun," Gorbachev said at an event marking the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Gorbachev called for trust to be restored through dialogue with Moscow and suggested the West should lift sanctions imposed against senior Russian officials over the country's support for separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine. Failure to achieve security in Europe would make the continent irrelevant in world affairs, he said. (More Mikhail Gorbachev stories.)