STOCKHOLM (Sputnik) – Pankin was the only Soviet ambassador to openly oppose the GKChP during the putsch in 1991.
"The West — if we talk about, say, the United States, Germany and France — was not initially interested in the collapse of the Soviet Union and it had a very good reason for this — nuclear weapons," Pankin told RIA Novosti.
According to Pankin, the West was afraid that the existing nuclear treaties with the Soviet Union would lose their viability as new nuclear powers would emerge following the USSR’s collapse.
"And then suddenly the Soviet Union dissolves, and at least three nuclear states appear — Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, which are not bound by any treaties. It seriously frightened the West," Pankin said.
According to the former diplomat, who served as the ambassador to Czechoslovakia at the time of the 1991 putsch, the Soviet Union could still exist today if it had not been for the actions of the coup plotters, the State Committee on the State of Emergency (GKChP).
Saving the Soviet Union would have been a better option for the country, Pankin believes.
Friday marks the 25th anniversary of the public announcement of the GKChP, a body comprising a group of eight coup plotters, being established in the Soviet Union to run the country.
