Oliver North to Newsmax: Gorbachev Couldn't 'Transform' Soviet Union

Retired Lt. Col. Oliver North told Newsmax this week that Mikhail Gorbachev, the late Russian president and last leader of the Soviet Union, "could not do what he set out to do" and "transform" the Soviet Union.

North, commenting on the news of Gorbachev’s death on Tuesday, told "Greg Kelly Reports" that the Soviet Union "disappeared because Gorbachev could not do what he set out to do, and that was glasnost [and] perestroika; the idea of openness that you're going to somehow transform from the communist government, already dying country, into something other than a dying country, and he couldn't do it."

North added that "despite his perhaps good intentions, we don't know what ultimately his design would have been. It certainly would not be [Russian President] Vladimir Putin's cause. "

North noted that "Putin blames Gorbachev for what ultimately happened because the Soviet Union dissolved under his watch."

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