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Kremlin: Putin already paid last respects to Gorbachev, will not attend funeral
Mikhail Gorbachev 1931 - 2022 - Photo. Facebook

Russian President Vladimir Putin is to miss the funeral of the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev.

On Thursday (September 1), Putin brought a bouquet of roses and paid his last respects to Gorbachev at the Moscow Central Clinical Hospital, where Gorbachev died after a prolonged illness. He made a sign of the cross in Russian Orthodox fashion before briefly touching the edge of the coffin.

“Unfortunately, the president’s work schedule will not allow him to do this on September 3, so he decided to do it today,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

He said Gorbachev’s ceremony would have “elements” of a state funeral, and that the state was helping to organise it.

It is seen as if Putin is denying, Gorbachev, the man who failed to prevent the collapse of the Soviet empire, the full state honours granted to Boris Yeltsin.

When Yeltsin died in 2007, Putin declared a national day of mourning and, alongside world leaders, attended a grand state funeral in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.

Gorbachev is idolised in the West for allowing eastern Europe to escape Soviet communist control but unloved at home for the chaos that his “perestroika” reforms unleashed.

Funeral of last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to take place on Saturday

Gorbachev’s decision to let the countries of the post-war Soviet communist bloc go their own way, and East and West Germany to reunify, helped to trigger nationalist movements within the 15 Soviet republics that he was powerless to quell.

Gorbachev will be buried on Saturday at the Novodevichy Cemetery, the most prestigious necropolis of the Russian capital, following a public ceremony in Moscow’s Hall of Columns.

levantnews- g7tamil

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