Mikhail Gorbachev with ES proprietor Evgeny Lebedev in 2012
(Picture: Handout)The last time I saw Mikhail it was clear his health was declining and the end drawing near. His hair was now totally white and that famous birthmark had retreated to a mere smudge in a face blotched by age. He certainly knew time was running out. “It’s a mess,” he said of his health. “There’s no point wasting time now, not in my situation.”
I had first met him in Paris shortly after the millennium. He was having lunch with my father at the restaurant in the Eiffel Tower. Together they co-owned the Russian campaigning newspaper Novaya Gazeta, whose editor Dmitry Muratov won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021 for what Novaya Gazeta had achieved.
