Mikhail Gorbachev was mourned in the West on Wednesday as a towering statesman who helped to end the Cold War, but his death received a cool response in Russia.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW THESE SALTWIRE VIDEOSLONDON - Mikhail Gorbachev was mourned in the West on Wednesday as a towering statesman who helped to end the Cold War, but his death received a cool response in Russia, engaged in a war with Ukraine to regain some of the power it lost when he presided over the Soviet Union's collapse.
U.S. President Joe Biden called Gorbachev"a man of remarkable vision" and, like other Western leaders, emphasised the freedoms he introduced, which Putin has steadily eroded. "He died at a time when not only has democracy in Russia failed ... but also when Russia and Russian President Putin have dug new graves in Europe and begun a terrible war."
Sergei Naryshkin, director of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service and one of the"siloviki" or men of power close to Putin, said:"'Perestroika' has long become history, but today we all have to deal with its consequences. When pro-democracy protests rocked Soviet-bloc nations in communist Eastern Europe in 1989, Gorbachev refrained from using force, breaking with the legacy of previous Soviet leaders who had sent tanks to crush uprisings in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.
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