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It took Putin 15 hours to publish a restrained condolence message on Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev was mourned in the West on Wednesday (August 31) as a towering statesman who helped to end the Cold War, but his death received a cool response in Russia, engaged in a war with Ukraine to regain some of the power it lost when he presided over the Soviet Union’s collapse.
It took President Putin more than 15 hours to publish the text of a restrained condolence message in which he said Gorbachev had had a “huge impact on the course of world history” and “deeply understood that reforms were necessary” to tackle the problems of the Soviet Union in the 1980s.
However, it appeared that Gorbachev would be accorded the same honour as previous Soviet leaders Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin and Leonid Brezhnev – a funeral in the Hall of Columns of the House of Unions, within sight of the Kremlin. The ceremony will take place on Saturday.
Russian media were far less interested in Gorbachev’s passing. Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told an educational forum that Gorbachev’s “romanticism” about rapprochement with West had been misplaced.
“The bloodthirstiness of our opponents showed itself,” he said.
Sergei Naryshkin, director of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, said: “Perestroika’ has long become history, but today we all have to deal with its consequences.
It fell to Gorbachev to lead the country in a very difficult period, to face many external and internal challenges, for which an adequate response was not found.”
Last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who is awarded Nobel Peace Prize, dies at age of 91
Gorbachev was born on March - 2 - 1931, in Privolnoye, Stavropol Krai, to a poor peasant family of Russian and Ukrainian heritage.
In recent years his health has been in decline and he had been in and out of hospital. In June, international media reported that he had been admitted after suffering from a kidney ailment, though his cause of death has not been announced, the BBC reported.
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