MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday paid tribute to Mikhail Gorbachev however won’t attend the late former Soviet chief’s funeral, a call reflecting the Kremlin’s ambivalence about Gorbachev’s legacy.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov mentioned that previous to departing for a working journey to Russia’s westernmost Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad, Putin visited a Moscow hospital the place Mikhail Gorbachev’s physique is stored earlier than Saturday’s funeral to put flowers at his coffin.
“Regrettably, the president’s working schedule wouldn’t allow him to do that on Saturday, so he decided to do that today,” Peskov mentioned in a convention name with reporters.
Russian state tv confirmed Putin strolling to Gorbachev’s open coffin and placing a bouquet of crimson roses subsequent to it. He stood in silence for just a few moments, bowed his head, touched the coffin, crossed himself and walked away.
Gorbachev, who died Tuesday, shall be buried at Moscow’s Novodevichy cemetery subsequent to his spouse Raisa after a farewell ceremony shall be held on the Pillar Hall of the House of the Unions, an iconic mansion close to the Kremlin that has served because the venue for state funerals since Soviet occasions.
Asked if Gorbachev shall be given a state funeral, Peskov mentioned the funeral can have “elements” of state funeral, similar to honorary guards, and the federal government will assist set up them. He wouldn’t elaborate how the ceremony will differ from a full-fledged state funeral.
Putin’s determination to pay a personal go to to the hospital whereas staying away from Saturday’s public farewell ceremony mixed with uncertainty surrounding the funeral’s standing mirror the Kremlin’s uneasiness concerning the legacy of Gorbachev. The late chief has been lauded within the West by placing an finish to the Cold War however reviled by many at house for actions that led to the 1991 Soviet collapse and plunged tens of millions into poverty.
If the Kremlin had declared a state funeral for Gorbachev, it could have made it awkward for Putin to snub the official ceremony. A state funeral would additionally oblige the Kremlin to ship invites to overseas leaders to attend it, one thing that Moscow would in all probability be reluctant to do amid the tensions with the West over its motion in Ukraine.
While avoiding specific private criticism of Gorbachev, Putin prior to now repeatedly blamed him for failing to safe written commitments from the West that will rule out NATO’s enlargement eastward — a difficulty that grew to become a significant irritant in Russia-West ties for many years and fomented tensions that exploded when the Russian chief despatched troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24.
In Wednesday’s telegram of condolences launched by the Kremlin, Putin praised Gorbachev as a person who left “an enormous impact on the course of world history.”
“He led the country during difficult and dramatic changes, amid large-scale foreign policy, economic and society challenges,” Putin mentioned. “He deeply realized that reforms were necessary and tried to offer his solutions for the acute problems.”
Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin political analyst, noticed that Putin’s determination to privately pay tribute to Gorbachev mirrored each “security problems and utter unpopularity of Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies.” At the identical time, Putin needed to indicate his respect to the previous head of state, Markov added.
The Kremlin’s ambivalent view of Gorbachev was mirrored by state tv broadcasts, which paid tribute to Gorbachev as a historic determine however described his reforms as poorly deliberate and held him chargeable for failing to safeguard the nation’s pursuits in dialogue with the West.
The criticism echoed earlier assessments by Putin, who has famously lamented the collapse of the Soviet Union because the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”
On Wednesday, Peskov mentioned that Gorbachev was an “extraordinary” statesman who will “always remain in the country’s history,” however famous what he described as his idealistic view of the West.
“Gorbachev gave an impulse for ending the Cold War and he sincerely wanted to believe that it would be over and an eternal romance would start between the renewed Soviet Union and the collective West,” Peskov mentioned. “This romanticism failed to materialize. The bloodthirsty nature of our opponents has come to light, and it’s good that we realized that in time.”
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Source: www.bostonherald.com”