Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, issued a strong condemnation of the "impasse" facing Russia and said the country could lose six more years of change and reform if the man who served two terms as president to 2008 was reinstalled as state leader. "It will be his mistake if the future president leaves everything without changes, thinks only about how to stay in power and tries to keep the old team - who are the ones to blame for how things are," Mr Gorbachev wrote in the opposition Novaya Gazeta newspaper. "We can assume that there will be no movement forward if there are not serious changes along the lines of a replacement of the entire system.