Treachery killed USSR, Russia’s Gorbachev tells BBC

Ex-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev says the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 was “a crime and a coup”.

In a rare interview marking 25 years since the demise of the Soviet Union, he told the BBC’s Steve Rosenberg he resigned to avoid a bloody civil war.

But today the West was “provoking Russia” and trying to undermine President Vladimir Putin, he said.