MADRID, Sep. 3 (.) –
Hundreds of people have come this Saturday to the Moscow House of Trade Unions to say their last goodbye to the last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, in an act that has had the presence of Western diplomats and to which he has not attended President Vladimir Putin.
The Kremlin has affirmed that the act will have part of the symbolism associated with a state funeral, but in recent days official gestures towards the figure of Gorbachev have been counted. Without national mourning, Putin on Wednesday limited himself to laying a bouquet of flowers on the coffin of the former Soviet leader.
The Gorbachev Foundation had reported that this Sunday’s event would be open to the public and hundreds of people have responded to the call, with long queues in the vicinity of the House of Trade Unions to try to access the room where the remains of the old president, according to ‘The Moscow Times’.
On the part of the Russian political leadership, the most representative presence has been that of the Vice President of the Security Council, Dimitri Medvedev. Ambassadors from several Western countries have also attended, including those from the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany, according to the Interfax agency.
The Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, has been the only European head of government to make an appearance, although from the Kremlin the spokesman, Dimitri Peskov, has hastened to clarify that there is no meeting with Putin on the agenda, reports TASS.
The ceremonies will continue with Gorbachev’s burial at Moscow’s Novodevichy Cemetery, where the last Soviet leader will lie next to his wife, Raisa.
Gorbachev died on August 30 in a hospital in the Russian capital and, since then, the disparity between the memory kept of him by Western governments, who thank him for his role in the end of the Cold War, and the coldness shown in his own country.
Among Russian citizens there continues to be a certain discomfort towards a figure that they associate with the end of an era of splendor and the lukewarmness of the current government, focused on justifying its current war adventure in Ukraine at all costs, as it shows.
