At 09:00 on Saturday morning, the last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, will be buried in Moscow - four days after his death. But he will not be given a state funeral and President Vladimir Putin has stated that he will not attend due to an alleged "scheduling conflict".

Gorbachev does get a public funeral near the Kremlin, with an open casket and a smaller ceremony, but it stands in stark contrast to similar funerals. When Boris Yeltsin was buried in 2007, it was solemnized and a national day of mourning was announced. The BBC writes that Gorbachev's small funeral is generally regarded as an "insult".

Gorbachev liberalized the Soviet Union and opened the country to the outside world, which also led to the fall of the entire union. He was regarded as a hero in the West, but Reuters notes that many Russians could never forgive him.