RUSSIA: Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, has died in Moscow aged 91, Russian news agencies reported.
“Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev died this evening after a serious and long illness,” the Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow said, quoted by the Interfax, TASS and RIA Novosti news agencies.
Gorbachev, who was in power between 1985 and 1991 and helped bring US-Soviet relations out of a deep freeze, was the last surviving Cold War leader.
Gorbachev spent the twilight years of his life in and out of hospital with increasingly fragile health and observed self-quarantine during the pandemic as a precaution against the coronavirus.
Gorbachev was regarded fondly in the West, where he was affectionately referred to by the nickname Gorby and best known for defusing US-Soviet nuclear tensions in the 1980s as well as bringing Eastern Europe out from behind the Iron Curtain.
He won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 for negotiating a historic nuclear arms pact with US leader Ronald Reagan and his decision to withhold the Soviet army when the Berlin Wall fell a year earlier was seen as key to preserving Cold War peace.
He was also championed in the West for spearheading reforms to achieve transparency and greater public discussion that hastened the breakup of the Soviet empire.
At home, Gorbachev remained a controversial figure and had a difficult relationship with Putin.
For Putin and many Russians, the breakup of the Soviet Union was a tragedy, bringing with it a decade of mass poverty and a weakening of Russia’s stature on the global stage.
Many Russians still look back fondly to the Soviet period, and Putin leans on its achievements to buttress Russia’s claim to greatness and his own prestige.
He will be buried in Moscow’s Novodevichy Cemetery next to his wife Raisa, who died in 1999, said Tass news agency, citing the foundation that the former Soviet leader set up once he left office. - THE MALAY MAIL
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