Mikhail Gorbachev, final Soviet leader who ended Cold War, dies at 91
Mikhail Gorbachev, who ended the Cold War without bloodshed but failed to prevent the collapse of the Soviet Union, died on Tuesday at the age of 91, hospital officials in Moscow said.Gorbachev, the last Soviet president, forged arms reduction deals with the United States and partnerships with Western powers to remove the Iron Curtain that had divided Europe since World War Two and bring about the reunification of Germany.“Mikhail Gorbachev passed away tonight after a serious and protracted disease,” Russia’s Central Clinical Hospital said in a statement.Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed “his deepest condolences” on Gorbachev’s death, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Interfax news agency.“Tomorrow he will send a telegram of condolences to his family and friends,” he said.
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev warns world ‘on brink of new Cold War’ Putin said in 2018 he would reverse the collapse of the Soviet Union if he could, news agencies reported at the time.In 2005, Putin called the event the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the twentieth century.After decades of Cold War tension and confrontation, Gorbachev brought the Soviet Union closer to the West than at any point since World War Two.But he saw that legacy wrecked in the final months of his life, as Putin’s invasion of Ukraine brought Western sanctions crashing down on Moscow, and politicians in both Russia and the West began to speak openly of a new Cold War.“Gorbachev died in a symbolic way when his life’s work, freedom, was effectively destroyed by Putin,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.Gorbachev won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990.Gorbachev will be buried in Moscow’s Novodevichy.
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