Hundreds of Russians bid farewell to the last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev

Part of the funeral ceremony of Mikhail Gorbachev.

AFP

Yesterday, hundreds of Russians attended the farewell of the last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, in a limited funeral ceremony, which was absent from Russian President Vladimir Putin, which the Kremlin attributed to his association with dates.

Gorbachev died last Tuesday evening, after a long struggle with a serious illness, according to the Russian Presidential Hospital, where he was being treated.

Gorbachev, who came to power in 1985, is well respected in Western countries, while some Russians are blamed for his contribution to the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, when he tried to save it with democratic and economic reforms.

The collapse of the Soviet Union, which Putin called "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century," brought the Cold War to an end.

Hundreds of Russians queued yesterday morning in front of the Council of Trade Unions in Moscow, where Gorbachev's body was buried, to pay their farewell, an AFP correspondent reported.

Inside, a picture of the former leader is placed next to the open casket, where his daughter Irina is seated, and honor guards stand on either side of the casket, while visitors lay flowers and bow in respect in front of him.

The Council of Trade Unions, where Gorbachev's body was buried, is a symbolic place in the Russian capital, where the bodies of several former leaders, such as Joseph Stalin, were buried in 1953.

After this ceremony, Gorbachev is buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery, along with his wife, Raisa Gorbacheva, who died in 1999 and with whom he was very close.

Although he did not attend the funeral, Putin went last Thursday to the Central Hospital in Moscow, where Gorbachev died and placed a bouquet of roses near his coffin.

And Germany, whose reunification by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union made it possible, announced flags at half-mast in the capital, Berlin, to mourn Gorbachev's departure.

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