Mikhail Gorbachev’s funeral to be held on Saturday

A portrait of Mikhail Gorbachev at the Gorbachev Foundation headquarters Moscow. Pic/AFP

The funeral of the Soviet Union's last leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who died on Tuesday in Moscow aged 91, will take place on Saturday, Russian news agencies reported, citing Gorbachev's daughter and a spokesperson for his foundation. It will be held in the famous Hall of Columns in the House of Unions, where Josef Stalin's body was put on display following his death in 1953.

The service will be open to the public and Gorbachev will then be buried at Moscow's Novodevichy Cemetery, TASS news agency cited Vladimir Polyakov, press secretary for the Gorbachev Foundation, as saying. Pavel Palazchenko, head of media relations at the Gorbachev Foundation, said the ceremony would be organised by the Putin administration's protocol service. Gorbachev will be given a military guard of honour - but his funeral will not be a state one.

Many high-ranking politicians, intellectuals, poets and royals have been buried at the Novodevichy cemetery since it was established in the 16th century - among them Boris Yeltsin, Russia's first president.

The Kremlin hailed Gorbachev as an extraordinary global statesman who helped end the Cold War, but had been badly wrong about the prospect of rapprochement with the "bloodthirsty" West.

‘Putin won't attend the funeral'

Russian President Vladimir Putin will not attend the funeral of Mikhail Gorbachev, on Saturday because of schedule constraints, the Kremlin said. In a call with reporters, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin had paid his respects on Thursday morning by visiting Moscow's Central Clinical Hospital, where Gorbachev died on Tuesday.

He added that Gorbachev's funeral would have "elements" of a state funeral, including a guard of honour, and that the state was helping the organisation.

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