Poll: Mikhail Gorbachev 'Will Support' Obama

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said on Monday he will support President Barack Obama for his reelection.

He made the announcement at Von Steuben High School in Chicago prior to the World Summit of Nobel Laureates at the University of Illinois, where he urged students to take up the cause of world peace, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

"My opinion of him is very (favorable). I will support him," Gorbachev said through an interpreter at the high school. "However, there are still vested interests who want another Cold War, another arms race, weapons trade, interventions. They will not succeed."

Gorbachev is probably best-known in America as the leader who dissolved the Soviet Union, though some argue he did so only after U.S. President Ronald Reagan forced him into a corner in the 1980s.