arch49

(FILES) This file photo taken on December 18, 1991, shows the Soviet (L) and Russian flags fluttering over the Kremlin, between the Spassky Gate towers, in Moscow. The Soviet flags will be taken down 31 December 1991, for the last time to be replaced by the Russian flags, marking the end of the Soviet Union. Russia marks on August 19-22, 2011, the 20th anniversary of the abortive 1991 coup against then Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev. Tanks rolled through Moscow towards the Russian White House, where Boris Yeltsin, leader of the Soviet-era Russian republic at the time, gathered his supporters after denouncing the coup from the roof of a tank, which resulted later in the collapse of the Soviet empire. - Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said on December 24, 2021, that Washington grew "arrogant and self-confident" after the collapse of the Soviet Union, leading to the expansion of the NATO military alliance. In recent years President Vladimir Putin has grown increasingly insistent that NATO is encroaching close to Russia's borders, and Moscow last week demanded "legal guarantees" that the US-led alliance will halt its eastward expansion. (Photo by ALAIN-PIERRE HOVASSE / AFP)