The Soviet Union's 10-year invasion of Afghanistan was a mistake, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev acknowledged 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 international policy in those years," Gorbachev was quoted by Interfax as saying Saturday.
"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.
The Soviet Union launched its invasion of Afghanistan with a night-time raid by elite forces on the presidential palace in Kabul on December 25, 1979, to back up the Marxist regime that had taken power in the country the year before.
The invasion proved a disaster, claiming the lives of at least 15,000 soldiers and fuelling the rise of extremists.