Sfdebris.net

Mikhail Gorbachev, Soviet leader between 1985 and 1991, has died in a Moscow hospital aged 91, the Russian news agency RIA Novosti has reported.

The news agency said that Gorbachev, regarded as one of the most significant statesmen of the 20th century, had died of a “serious and prolonged illness” at the Central Clinic Hospital.

It didn’t give any more details but Gorbachev was said to be gravely ill earlier this year with a kidney ailment.

Paying tribute, Boris Johnson wrote on Twitter that he had "always admired the courage and integrity" of Gorbachev in "bringing the Cold War to a peaceful conclusion"

A Kremlin spokesman to Interfax said Vladimir Putin "expresses deepest condolences" for Gorbachev's death.

Loved by the West and despised by hardliners within the Soviet Union’s Communist Party, Gorbachev is credited with helping to end the Cold War and presiding over the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In 1990, Gorbachev won the Nobel Peace Prize “for the leading role he played in the radical changes in East-West relations”.

The charming and modernising Gorbachev was voted in as Communist Party General Secretary in 1985, the de facto leader of the Soviet Union when its leadership had been in disarray since the death of Leonid Brezhnev in 1982.

The news agency said that Gorbachev, regarded as one of the most significant statesmen of the 20th century, had died of a “serious and prolonged illness” at the Central Clinic Hospital.

It didn’t give any more details but Gorbachev was said to be gravely ill earlier this year with a kidney ailment.

Paying tribute, Boris Johnson wrote on Twitter that he had "always admired the courage and integrity" of Gorbachev in "bringing the Cold War to a peaceful conclusion".

A Kremlin spokesman to Interfax said Vladimir Putin "expresses deepest condolences" for Gorbachev's death.

Loved by the West and despised by hardliners within the Soviet Union’s Communist Party, Gorbachev is credited with helping to end the Cold War and presiding over the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In 1990, Gorbachev won the Nobel Peace Prize “for the leading role he played in the radical changes in East-West relations”.

The charming and modernising Gorbachev was voted in as Communist Party General Secretary in 1985, the de facto leader of the Soviet Union when its leadership had been in disarray since the death of Leonid Brezhnev in 1982.

He was the architect of freedoms for many people living in the Soviet Union but also relaxed the control of the authorities, and has been blamed for breaking the Communist system that Vladimir Lenin set up after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.

The Soviet Union that he tried to breathe new life into with his liberal reforms, Perestroika and Glasnost, creaked and broke in 1991. It splintered into several new or reborn countries, sparking a sharp economic decline that set off nationalism in across the region and allowed the oligarchs to grab.

Gorbachev was the target of a failed hardline coup and by the end of 1991 he had resigned in favour of the ascending Boris Yeltsin.

Gorbachev and Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, were reported to mistrust each other. Gorbachev considered Mr Putin’s aggression toward former Soviet states, his invasion of Georgia in 2008 and his invasion of Ukraine in February as betrayals.

Mr Putin blamed Gorbachev for the collapse of the Soviet Union, which he has made rebuilding the focus of his presidency.

There has, so far, been no reaction to news of Gorbachev’s death from the Kremlin but pro-war and pro-Kremlin channels have rejoiced, calling him a “traitor”.

Gorbachev described his friendly relationship with Margaret Thatcher as a catalyst for the tearing down of the Iron Curtain.
“We gradually developed personal relations that became increasingly friendly,” he said following her death in 2013.

“In the end, we were able to achieve mutual understanding, and this contributed to a change in the atmosphere between our country and the West and to the end of the Cold War.”

The former Soviet leader met the Prime Minister in 1984, when he led a Russian parliamentary delegation to Britain.

After that meeting, Mrs Thatcher said of Gorbachev: “We can do business together”.

Gorbachev conceded that the relationship was "not always smooth" but said they "stayed in touch, exchanging letters" over the years.

Gorbachev did not appear to have the same respect for Reagan. Declassified documents show that after the US-Soviet summit at Reykjavik in 1986, Gorbachev complained of Reagan's “extreme primitivism, a caveman cast of mind and intellectual feebleness”.

Mrs Thatcher was an important interloper between the two men - “an agent of influence in both directions” - as her former foreign policy adviser Sir Percy Cradock put it.

Gorbachev was known to enjoy holding vigorous debates with Mrs Thatcher and valued her attention to detail and ability to work long hours with little sleep, traits she shared with himself.

Tom Tugendhat, the chair of the Commons foreign affairs select committee, wrote on Twitter. "Mikhail Gorbachev’s reported death... is a reminder of how far Russia has fallen. From a powerful, if tyrannical state to now the playpen of gangsters and war criminals.