MIKHAIL GORBACHEV: RUSSIA BIDS FAREWELL TO LAST SOVIET UNION LEADER

Sat 03 September 2022:

Russia put to rest the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, in a Moscow service that lacked the fanfare of a state funeral and was notable for the absence of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the final Soviet leader to bring the Cold War to an end, will be buried in Moscow four days after his death at the age of 91. Due to work obligations, Russian President Vladimir Putin will not attend the funeral, according to the Kremlin.

Many people, however, see this as an insult against the man who oversaw the fall of the Soviet Union. When Gorbachev took control in 1985, he instituted sweeping reforms and opened the Soviet Union to the outside world.

However, he was powerless to stop the union’s dissolution in 1991, and many Russians hold him responsible for the years of unrest that followed. He was well-liked outside of Russia, and UN Secretary General António Guterres claimed that he had “changed the course of history.”

The funeral service will start at 10:00 local time (07:00 GMT), according to the Gorbachev Foundation, with the public expressing their respects to Gorbachev.

Like numerous of his Soviet forebears, including Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Leonid Brezhnev, he will lie in state in the ancient Columned Hall of the House of Unions.

Later on Saturday, Gorbachev will be laid to rest in Novodevichy, the biggest cemetery in Moscow and the final resting place of many notable Russians. His wife Raisa, who passed away from leukaemia in 1999, will be buried next to him.

Russia bids farewell to last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev#MikhailGorbachev pic.twitter.com/LOzBZieMIn

— INDEPENDENT PRESS (@IpIndependent) September 3, 2022

“He deeply understood that reforms were necessary, he strove to offer his own solutions to urgent problems,” the Russian leader said.

On Thursday, he also discreetly placed flowers at Gorbachev’s casket.

According to the BBC’s Steve Rosenberg in Moscow, the fact that Saturday’s event won’t be a state funeral indicates that the present Kremlin leadership has little interest in preserving Gorbachev’s legacy.

It was well known that Gorbachev and Putin had a strained relationship.

According to sources, their last encounter was in 2006, and the Russian president once called the dissolution of the USSR the “biggest geopolitical calamity of the century.”

🇷🇺 Russia bids farewell to last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev

Russia laid to rest the last leader of the Soviet Union #MikhailGorbachev in a Moscow ceremony but without the fanfare of a state funeral & with the glaring absence of Russian President Putin.

#Russia #UkraineWar pic.twitter.com/08rtYXmpxZ

— INDEPENDENT PRESS (@IpIndependent) September 3, 2022

Gorbachev apparently disapproved of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, although supporting the acquisition of the Crimean peninsula in 2014.

His health had been worsening, and he had been in and out of the hospital throughout the previous years. According to press sources from throughout the world, he was admitted in June after suffering kidney difficulties.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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