The Kremlin on Wednesday hailed late Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev as an extraordinary global statesman who helped end the Cold War, but said he had been badly wrong about the prospect of rapprochement with the "bloodthirsty" West.
The comments underlined President Vladimir Putin's feelings about the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, which Gorbachev unwittingly presided over, and which Putin has lamented as the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century which he would reverse if given a chance.
