Mikhail Gorbachev, who changed the course of history by triggering the demise of the Soviet Union and was one of the great figures of the 20th century, has died in Moscow aged 91.
His death was announced by Russian news agencies, which said Gorbachev had died at a central hospital in Moscow “after a serious and long illness.”
Gorbachev, in power between 1985 and 1991, helped bring US-Soviet relations out of a deep freeze and was the last surviving Cold War leader.
His life was one of the most influential of his times, and his reforms as Soviet leader transformed his country and allowed Eastern Europe to free itself from Soviet rule.
The changes he set in motion saw him lionized in the West—he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990—but also earned him the scorn of many Russians who lamented the end of their country’s role as a global superpower.
He spent much of the past two decades on the political periphery, intermittently calling for the Kremlin and the White House to mend ties as tensions soared to Cold War levels after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and launched an offensive in Ukraine earlier this year.
World leaders paid tribute to the man who played a major role in ending the Cold War, praising him for being a “rare leader” who helped change the course of world history.
President Vladimir Putin said Gorbachev “was a politician and statesman who had a huge impact on the course of world history,” expressing “deepest condolences” to his friends and family.
“He led our country during a period of complex, dramatic changes,” Putin added. “He deeply understood that reforms were necessary, he strove to offer his own solutions to urgent problems.”
US President Joe Biden hailed a “rare leader… one with the imagination to see that a different future was possible and the courage to risk his entire career to achieve it.”
“The result was a safer world and greater freedom for millions of people,” Biden said.
President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Germany was “bound in gratitude with him for his decisive contribution to German unity.”
Chancellor Olaf Scholz hailed Gorbachev’s role in reuniting Germany but lamented that he “died at a time in which democracy has failed in Russia.”
“A one-of-a-kind statesman who changed the course of history” and “did more than any other individual to bring about the peaceful end of the Cold War,” UN chief Antonio Guterres said in a statement.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said: “I share the grief of other world leaders over the death of Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, the last leader of the former Soviet Union. That the world is much safer now and there is greater freedom for millions of people in the former communist countries in Eastern Europe is in part because of Mr. Gorbachev’s political and economic reforms.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen hailed a “trusted and respected leader” who “opened the way for a free Europe.”
His “crucial role” in bringing down the Iron Curtain and ending the Cold War left a legacy “we will not forget,” she added.
NATO Secretary general Jens Stoltenberg said Gorbachev’s “vision of a better world remains an example” and paid tribute to his “historic reforms… (which) opened the possibility of a partnership between Russia and NATO.”
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.
A source close to the Gorbachev family told news agency TASS that he would be buried next to Raisa at Moscow’s Novodevichy cemetery, the resting place of many other famous Russian figures, including Yeltsin. With Vince Lopez