MIKHAIL GORBACHEV, THE last leader of the Soviet Union, has died in Moscow aged 91, Russian news agencies reported today.

“Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev died this evening after a serious and long illness,” the Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow said, quoted by the Interfax, TASS and RIA Novosti news agencies.

Gorbachev, who was in power between 1985 and 1991 and helped bring US-Soviet relations out of a deep freeze, was the last surviving Cold War leader.

He spent much of the last two decades on the political periphery, intermittently calling for the Kremlin and the White House to mend ties as tensions soared to Cold War levels since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and launched an offensive in Ukraine earlier this year.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Joe Biden have both released statements in response to Gorbachev’s death. 

Putin expressed his “deep sympathies” over Gorbachev’s death, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian news agencies. Peskov added that Putin will send a telegram of condolences to the late leader’s family. 

Biden hailed Gorbachev as a “rare leader” who made the world a safer place.

“These were the acts of a rare leader – one with the imagination to see that a different future was possible and the courage to risk his entire career to achieve it,” Biden said in a statement, referring to Gorbachev’s democratic reforms.

He added: “The result was a safer world and greater freedom for millions of people.” 

In the European Union, Taoiseach Micheál Martin and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen were among those who paid tribute to the former Soviet leader shortly after the news broke this evening.

“I am deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Mikhail Gorbachev, one of the most significant political figures of the late Twentieth Century.

“At a time when the threat to the world of nuclear destruction was very real, he saw the urgent need for rapprochement with the west and for greater openness and reform – glasnost and perestroika – in the then Soviet Union,” Martin said.

His leadership helped to end the arms race between the east and west, end the Cold War and bring down the Iron Curtain that had divided Europe since the Second World War.

“That contributed directly to the enlargement of the European Union that came to fruition during Ireland’s 2004 Presidency of the EU.

“There are very few figures who can be said to have truly changed the world. Mikhail Gorbachev was one. He will long be remembered,” the Taoiseach concluded.

Saddened to hear of the passing of Mikhail Gorbachev.
His sense of history, and commitment to openness, reform, and building bridges with the West, changed the world.

— Micheál Martin (@MichealMartinTD) August 30, 2022

Mikhail Gorbachev was a trusted and respected leader. He played a crucial role to end the Cold War and bring down the Iron Curtain. It opened the way for a free Europe.

This legacy is one we will not forget.

R.I.P Mikhail Gorbachev

— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) August 30, 2022

Gorbachev spent the twilight years of his life in and out of hospital with increasingly fragile health and observed self-quarantine during the pandemic as a precaution against the coronavirus.

Gorbachev was remembered fondly in the West, where he was referred to affectionately by the nickname Gorby and best known for defusing US-Soviet nuclear tensions in the 1980s as well as bringing Eastern Europe out from behind the Iron Curtain.

He won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 for negotiating a historic nuclear arms pact with US leader Ronald Reagan and his decision to withhold the Soviet army when the Berlin Wall fell a year earlier was seen as key to preserving Cold War peace.

He was also championed in the West for spearheading reforms to achieve transparency and greater public discussion that hastened the breakup of the Soviet empire.

© – AFP, 2022 additional reporting from Céimin Burke