A minimum ceremony. The funeral of the last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, takes place on Saturday September 3 in Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin has no plans to attend. Great political figure of the 20th century, Mikhail Gorbachev died Tuesday evening at the age of 91 following a “long and serious illness”, depending on the hospital where he was being treated. Franceinfo summarizes the program of his funeral.
A farewell ceremony
The funeral began with a farewell ceremony at the House of Trade Unions, a symbolic place in the Russian capital where the remains of several communist dignitaries were exposed, such as that of Joseph Stalin, in 1953. The ceremony began at 9 a.m. (Paris time) and is open to the public, said the Gorbachev Foundation. The former Soviet leader will then be buried in the Novodevichy cemetery, next to his wife Raisa Gorbatcheva, who died in 1999 and to whom he was very close.
No national day of mourning
Hailed in the West as a man of peace, Mikhail Gorbachev is seen by many in Russia as responsible for Moscow’s geopolitical downgrade and the years of political, economic and moral crisis that followed the fall of the USSR. Sign of this disaffection, no day of national mourning has been announced. Which makes Bertrand Badie, emeritus professor at Sciences Po, say that thehe funeral of Mikhail Gorbachev is not “not up to the story” nor of “the stature of the character”.
However, “national funeral elements” will be present at Mikhail Gorbachev’s burial, including a “honor guard”, underlined the Kremlin. But in a context of high tensions between Russia and Western countries over the conflict in Ukraine, no foreign leader has announced travel to attend the funeral in Moscow… with the exception of the Hungarian nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who is going it alone in Europe.
The latter is going to Moscow on Saturday morning, said the Secretary of State for International Communication. he goes “to pay homage to the late Mikhail Gorbachev”, accompanied by a Hungarian delegation, he said on Twitter. But he will not meet Vladimir Putin. “According to our information, he will only come to say goodbye to Gorbachev. There have been no requests for interviews”Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian news agency Ria Novosti.
Vladimir Putin absent
The list of people who will attend the funeral is not known, but the Kremlin had warned on Thursday that Vladimir Putin would be absent due, officially, to a “timetable” charged. According to images broadcast on Russian television, the president already visited the Central Clinical Hospital (TSKB) in Moscow on Thursday, where he died Mikhail Gorbachev.
The day after his death, Vladimir Putin paid him a first minimal tribute on Wednesday, in a message of condolence. In a neutral tone, he noted that Mikhail Gorbachev had had “a great influence on the history of the world” and that he had “strive to come up with their own solutions to problems”. The relationship between the two men was complex, between marks of esteem and mutual reproaches, before giving way to cordial indifference.