The last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev passed away at age 91 on Tuesday. This was made known to the public by a Russian news outlet quoting medical sources.
Africa Today News, New York reports that the last surviving ruler of the Cold War, Gorbachev served as head from 1985 to 1991 and was instrumental in thawing icy ties between the US and the Soviet Union.
According to the news outlets Interfax, TASS, and RIA Novosti, Gorbachev passed away this evening after a terrible and prolonged illness, which was confirmed by the Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow.
From 1985 until the Soviet Union’s dissolution in 1991, Gorbachev served as its ruler.
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.
Gorbachev spent the twilight years of his life in and out of hospital with increasingly fragile health and observed self-quarantine during the pandemic as a precaution against the coronavirus.
Gorbachev was remembered fondly in the West, where he was referred to affectionately by the nickname Gorby and best known for defusing US-Soviet nuclear tensions in the 1980s as well as bringing Eastern Europe out from behind the Iron Curtain.
Africa Today News, New York recalls that in 1990, he won a Nobel Peace Prize for his roles in negotiating a historic nuclear arms pact with US leader Ronald Reagan and his decision to withhold the Soviet army when the Berlin Wall fell a year earlier was seen as key to preserving Cold War peace.
He was also championed in the West for spearheading reforms to achieve transparency and greater public discussion that hastened the breakup of the Soviet empire.