The Spitak Earthquake (also called Leninakan Earthquake and Gyumri Earthquake) was a tremor with a magnitude of 7.1,^[3] that took place on December 7, 1988 at 11:41 local time (07:41 UTC) in the Spitak region of Armenia, then part of the Soviet Union. The earthquake killed at least 25,000 people;^[2] geologists and earthquake engineering experts laid the blame on the poorly built support structures of apartments and other buildings built during the "stagnation" era of Leonid Brezhnev.^[4]

Despite the tensions of the Cold War, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev formally asked the United States, within a few days of the earthquake, for humanitarian help, the first such request since World War II.^[4] 111 countries, including Belgium, Chile, China, France, Finland, Great Britain, Israel, Italy, Japan, Norway, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, US, West Germany, and Yugoslavia sent a substantial amount of humanitarian aid to the Soviet Union in the form of rescue equipment, search teams and medical supplies.