Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev has died at 91, AP News report.
Russian news agencies report that Gorbachev’s office said earlier that he was undergoing treatment at the hospital.
Gorbachev died after a long illness, according to a statement issued by the Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow. No other details were given.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday expressed his deepest condolences on Gorbachev’s death, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Interfax news agency.
Mikhail Gorbachev set out to revitalize the Soviet Union but ended up unleashing forces that led to the collapse of communism, the breakup of the state and the end of the Cold War.
Though in power for less than seven years, Gorbachev unleashed a breathtaking series of changes which, unfortunately, overtook him and resulted in the collapse of the Soviet state, the freeing of Eastern European nations from Russian domination and the end of decades of East-West nuclear confrontation.
U.S. President Joe Biden called Gorbachev a “man of remarkable vision” and a “rare leader” who had “the imagination to see that a different future was possible and the courage to risk his entire career to achieve it. Biden said in a statement:
The result was a safer world and greater freedom for millions of people.
Gorbachev’s decline was humiliating. His power was reduced by an attempted coup against him in August 1991, he spent his last months in the office watching republic after republic declare independence until he resigned on December 25, 1991. The Soviet Union wrote itself into oblivion a day later.
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