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- There are no state honors or Putin’s presence planned for the funeral
- Gorbachev’s reforms precipitated the end of the Soviet Union
- Former leader surprised by Russian actions in Ukraine
- This content was produced in Russia, where coverage of Russian military operations in Ukraine is restricted by law.
MOSCOW, Sept 3 (Reuters) – Muscovites lined up near the Kremlin on Saturday to pay their respects to Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet leader who was widely admired in the West for his reforms and who lived long enough to see Russia’s leadership retreat far. of that change.
Gorbachev, who died on Tuesday at the age of 91, was to be buried without state honors or the presence of President Vladimir Putin.
However, he was granted a public send-off, with authorities allowing Russians to view his coffin in the imposing Hall of Columns, within sight of the Kremlin, where previous Soviet leaders have been laid to rest.
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Bearers lifted Gorbachev’s wooden coffin, draped with a Russian tricolor flag, and placed it in the center of the hall, where a soft recording of melancholy music from the film “Schindler’s List” was played. background
It was no surprise that Putin, a longtime KGB intelligence officer who has called the collapse of the Soviet Union a “geopolitical catastrophe,” denied Gorbachev full state honors and said his schedule did not allow him allowed to attend the funeral.
Putin, however, paid tribute to Gorbachev alone on Thursday and the Kremlin said his honor guard would provide an “element” of a state occasion at the funeral of Gorbachev, who won the Nobel Peace Prize l in 1990 for his role in ending the war. cold war
Gorbachev became a hero to many in the West because he allowed Eastern Europe to break free of more than four decades of Soviet communist control, allowed East and West Germany to reunite, and forged arms control treaties with the United States.
But when the 15 Soviet republics seized the same freedoms to demand their independence, Gorbachev was powerless to prevent the collapse of the Union in 1991, six years after he became its leader.
Because of this, and the economic chaos unleashed by his “perestroika” liberalization program, many Russians could not forgive him.
ORBAN FROM HUNGARY TO ATTEND
The many Western heads of state and government who would normally have attended will be absent on Saturday, driven away by the chasm in relations between Moscow and the West opened by Putin’s decision to send troops to Ukraine in February.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a conservative nationalist and one of the few European leaders on good terms with Putin, will attend the funeral, spokesman Zoltan Kovacs wrote on Twitter.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the RIA news agency that Putin did not plan to meet with Orban during his visit to Moscow.
Several Russian officials and cultural figures, including lawmaker Konstantin Kosachyov and singer Alla Pugachyova, also paid their respects to Gorbachev’s family, who were seated to the left of his open coffin.
Gorbachev’s funeral contrasts with the day of national mourning and state funeral in Moscow’s main cathedral given in 2007 to former Russian president Boris Yeltsin, who was instrumental in sidelining Gorbachev when the Soviet Union collapsed and later elected Putin. as his own successor. Read more
After the ceremony, however, Gorbachev will be buried like Yeltsin in Moscow’s Novodevichy Cemetery, next to his beloved wife Raisa, who died 23 years ago.
Upon entering the Kremlin in 2000, Putin wasted little time rolling back the political plurality that had developed from Gorbachev’s policy of “glasnost,” or openness, and slowly began to rebuild Moscow’s influence over many of their lost republics.
Gorbachev’s interpreter and aide said this week that Russia’s actions in Ukraine had left the former leader “shocked and bewildered” in the final months of his life. Read more
“It’s not just the operation that started on February 24, but the whole evolution of relations between Russia and Ukraine over the last few years that was really a big blow to him. It really crushed him, emotionally and psychologically,” Pavel Palazhchenko. he told Reuters in an interview.
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Reuters report; Written by Kevin Liffey and Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Frances Kerry
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