Mikhail Gorbachev, who once sent troops into restive republics to preserve the union, said Wednesday that President Boris Yeltsin made a "big mistake" sending armed forces into Chechnya.


"If they think that this is the moment when they can solve the problem relying on armed force, using armed methods, it is a great error," he told Associated Press Television.


Gorbachev, who had ordered troops to quell independence movements in Georgia, Azerbaijan and the Baltics in the late 1980s, made it clear he felt Yeltsin has not benefited from his errors of judgment: "It was a mistake, a big mistake and I would say it smells of adventurism."