Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who launched drastic reforms that helped end the Cold War and precipitated the breakup of the Soviet Union, is set to be buried in a relatively low-key ceremony snubbed by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
FILE - Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and his wife Raisa in East Germany during youth rally in East Berlin, Germany, April 18, 1986. When Mikhail Gorbachev is buried Saturday at Moscow's Novodevichy Cemetery, he will once again be next to his wife, Raisa, with whom he shared the world stage in a visibly close and loving marriage that was unprecedented for a Soviet leader.
Asked what specific business will keep Putin busy on Saturday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the president will have a series of working meetings, an international phone call and needs to prepare for a business forum in Russia’s Far East he's scheduled to attend next week. The grand, chandeliered hall lined by columns hosted balls for the nobility under the czars and served as a venue for high-level meetings and congresses along with state funerals during Soviet times. Upon entering the building, mourners saw honor guards flanking a large photo of Gorbachev standing with a broad smile, a reminder of the cheerful vigor he brought to the Soviet leadership after a series of dour, ailing predecessors.
Declaring a state funeral for Gorbachev would have obliged Putin to attend it and would have required Moscow to invite foreign leaders, something that it was apparently reluctant to do amid soaring tensions with the West after sending troops toDmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of Russia's Security Council chaired by Putin who served as Russia's president in 2008-2012, showed up at the farewell ceremony.
The farewell viewing was shadowed by the awareness that the openness Gorbachev championed has been stifled under Putin. Putin, who once lamented the collapse of the Soviet Union as the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,” has avoided explicit personal criticism of Gorbachev but has repeatedly blamed him for failing to secure written commitments from the West that would rule out NATO’s expansion eastward. The issue has marred Russia-West relations for decades and fomented tensions that exploded when the Russian leader sent troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24.
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