Hundreds pay last respects to Gorbachev in Moscow, Putin a no-show
Hundreds of mourners lined up Saturday to pay tribute to the eighth and final Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, lauded in the West for helping end the Cold War, in a farewell snubbed by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The Kremlin's refusal to declare a state funeral reflects its uneasiness about the legacy of Gorbachev, who remains reviled by many at home for the Soviet collapse.
On Thursday, Putin privately laid flowers at Gorbachev's coffin at a Moscow hospital where he died. The Kremlin said the president's busy schedule would prevent him from attending the funeral.
Asked what specific business will keep the Moscow leader busy on Saturday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Putin is set to have a series of working meetings, an international phone call and needs to prepare for a business forum in Russia's Far East he's scheduled to attend next week.
Gorbachev, who died Tuesday at the age of 91, will be buried at Moscow's Novodevichy cemetery next to his wife, Raisa, following a farewell ceremony at the Pillar Hall of the House of the Unions -- an opulent 18th-century mansion near the Kremlin that has served as the venue for state funerals since Soviet times.
However, Moscow refused to declare a national day of mourning or display his casket at the Kremlin, an arrangement last observed when former Russian President Boris Yeltsin died in 2007.
Yeltsin, Russia's first post-Soviet leader -- who anointed Putin as his preferred successor and set the stage for him to win the presidency by stepping down -- was given a lavish state funeral, including having his casket set on a gun carriage and drawn to the cemetery gates by an armoured personnel carrier, with Putin giving the only eulogy after the burial.
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