Video: The Last Soviet Leader Who Ended Cold War Has Passed at 91

Mikhail Gorbachev, who ended the Cold War without slaughter but neglected to forestall the breakdown of the Soviet Union, passed on Tuesday at 91 years old, medical clinic authorities in Moscow said.

Gorbachev, the last Soviet president, forged arms decrease deals with the United States, and associations with Western powers to eliminate the Iron Curtain that had separated Europe since World War Two and achieved the reunification of Germany. However, internal reforms watered down the Soviet Union to the place where it fell apart, a time that President Vladimir Putin has called the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe“.

“Mikhail Gorbachev passed away tonight after a serious and protracted disease,” said Russia’s Central Clinical Hospital. Putin communicated “his deepest condolences,” as per a Kremlin representative. In 2018 Putin said that he would change the Soviet Union’s breakdown if he could, news offices detailed.

Multiple world leaders rushed to offer recognition. European Commission boss Ursula von der Leyen said Gorbachev, who was granted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990, had opened the way for a free Europe. Joe Biden said he had believed in “glasnost and perestroika – openness and restructuring – not as mere slogans, but as the path forward for the people of the Soviet Union after so many years of isolation and deprivation.”

Following years of Cold War strain and conflict, Gorbachev carried the Soviet Union nearer to the West than at any time since World War Two. However, Gorbachev saw his legacy destroyed later throughout his life, as the attack of Ukraine brought Western assent crashing down on Moscow, and lawmakers in both Russia and the West started to discuss another Cold War.

“Gorbachev died in a symbolic way when his life’s work, freedom, was effectively destroyed by Putin,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior individual at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He will be covered in Moscow’s Novodevichy Cemetery close to his significant other Raisa, who also died in 1999.

“We are all orphans now. But not everyone realizes it,” said Alexei Venediktov, head of a liberal media radio outlet that shut down in the wake of going under strain over its coverage in the Ukraine war.  Gorbachev who was momentarily deposed in an August 1991 coup by party hardliners – battled pointlessly to forestall a breakdown.

“The era of Gorbachev is the era of perestroika, the era of hope, the era of our entry into a missile-free world…but there was one miscalculation: we did not know our country well,” said Vladimir Shevchenko, who headed Gorbachev’s convention office when he was the Soviet leader.

Vladimir Rogov, a Russian-designated official in a part of [redacted] currently involved by favorable to Moscow powers, said Gorbachev had purposely driven the Soviet Union to its death and called him a swindler.

“He gave us all freedom – but we don’t know what to do with it,” liberal market analyst Ruslan Grinberg told the military media source Zvezda after visiting Gorbachev in a medical clinic in June.

It seems that many were fond of Gorbachev, and he may have made more positive waves than negative ones. One thing is for sure though, in the wake of his passing everyone is curious to see what happens next and what moves Putin will make.