The Soviet Union's 10-year invasion of Afghanistan was a mistake, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said on the eve of the 15th anniversary of Soviet withdrawal.
"The fact that we moved our troops into Afghanistan was a political mistake, which had to do with the Soviet Union's ideological approach to internationalpolicy in those years," Gorbachev was quoted by Interfax as saying.
"An attempt to force an extraneous social model on a country that has deep traditions of its own is always doomed to failure," Gorbachev said.
