By The last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev has died at the age of 91, according to reports from Russian news agencies.
He was said to have breathed his last in Moscow, the Russian capital on Tuesday night after a “long and serious illness”.
Gorbachev led the Soviet Union from 1985 until its collapse in 1991. He helped bring US-Soviet relations out of a deep freeze, winning the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize for his role in ending the Cold War.
According to AFP, 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.
He was also championed in the West for spearheading reforms to achieve transparenc and greater public discussion that hastened the breakup of the Soviet empire.
Gorbachev will be buried in Moscow’s Novodevichy Cemetery next to his wife Raisa, who died in 1999, state-owned TASS reported.
