Vladimir Putin Denies Mikhail Gorbachev State Funeral, Will Stay Away
NDTV
Gorbachev will be buried on Saturday after a public ceremony in Moscow's Hall of Columns.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is to miss the funeral of the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, denying the man who failed to prevent the collapse of the Soviet empire the full state honours granted to Boris Yeltsin.
Gorbachev, idolised in the West for allowing eastern Europe to escape Soviet communist control but unloved at home for the chaos that his "perestroika" reforms unleashed, will be buried on Saturday after a public ceremony in Moscow's Hall of Columns.
The grand hall, within sight of the Kremlin, hosted the funerals of Soviet leaders Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin and Leonid Brezhnev. Gorbachev will be given a military guard of honour - but his funeral will not be a state one.
State television on Thursday showed Putin solemnly placing red roses beside Gorbachev's coffin - left open as is traditional in Russia - in Moscow's Central Clinical Hospital, where he died on Tuesday aged 91.
