Roald Sagdeev: "Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are leaders in ongoing democratic and economic changes in the region"

Sagdeev has been living in the US since 1990 and worked as director of the Soviet Space Research Institute, APA reports.

Professor spoke about the events happened while he served as deputy of the former USSR's Supreme Council and while he was in Mikhail Gorbachev's team.

The academic showed the conflict between Gorbachev and Yeltsin as one of the causes of the collapse of the USSR. He said Mikhail Gorbachev told The Washington Post editors that he wished he had appointed Yeltsin ambassador to one of "banana countries."

Commenting on the current situation in the post-Soviet countries, Sagdeev underlined that Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are leaders in ongoing democratic and economic changes in the region.

According to Sagdeev demographic problems exist in Russia. He said quoting scientists that Russian population fells 1 million every year and the population will be 90 million in the middle of the 20th century.