MOSCOW: Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev has warned Western leaders and Russian President Vladimir Putin against dragging the world into a new version of the Cold War he helped to end a quarter of a century ago.

Gorbachev, recently in hospital, voiced his disquiet in a newspaper interview at the current standoff over Ukraine, which has prompted the United States and European Union to impose sanctions on Russia, and Moscow to retaliate by banning most Western food imports.

“As a first step, the logic of mutual accusations and sanctions must be left behind,” the 83-year-old told the official Rossiiskaya Gazeta newspaper.

“One must not get dragged back into a new Cold War. Shared threats to our security have not disappeared.” A voice of moderation in Russia, where pro-Kremlin media regularly cast the United States as a destructive force bent on destabilising the country, Gorbachev said more shared challenges face Moscow and the West than divisions. He listed dangers facing the world, including the Ebola virus and the Islamic State insurgency in Iraq and Syria, and said they could help bring the sides closer together.

“In the face of shared challenges, we can again find a common language. It won’t be easy but there is no other way,” he said in the interview to mark the upcoming 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on Nov. 9, 1989.