World leaders reacted to the death of Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, in Moscow at the age of 91 on Tuesday, with Western leaders hailing him for opening up the Soviet Union and creating the conditions for the end of the Cold War.
President Biden, in a statement, called Gorbachev “a man of remarkable vision.” He also said that the Soviet leader’s policies of “glasnost” and “perestroika,” or openness and restructuring, 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.”
To say he risked his career is perhaps an understatement — the dislike toward Gorbachev among many Soviet loyalists was so clear that it became the focus of a Pizza Hut commercial in which he starred.
Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed his “deepest condolences,” a spokesman told the Interfax news agency, adding that Putin will “send a telegram of condolences to his family and friends.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Gorbachev “is a statesman who will forever remain in the history of our country. Many argue about the role he played. But the fact that he was an extraordinary person, a unique person, is unequivocal. He is known, remembered and will be remembered all over the world.
“Gorbachev gave impetus to the end of the Cold War, and he sincerely wanted to believe that it would end and that an eternal romantic period would begin between the new Soviet Union and the West,” Peskov continued, and used the occasion to slam the West, which has backed Ukraine in its fight against invading Russia. “This romanticism did not come true ... the bloodthirstiness of our opponents showed itself.”
U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said he was “deeply saddened” by Gorbachev’s passing. “Mikhail Gorbachev was a one-of-a kind statesman who changed the course of history,” he wrote on Twitter. “The world has lost a towering global leader, committed multilateralist, and tireless advocate for peace.”