World leaders pay tribute to Gorbachev, last rare leader of USSR, who dies at 91

World leaders have paid tribute to Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader who oversaw the collapse of the USSR and lifted the Iron Curtain, marking a pivotal turning point in world history.

Gorbachev, Nobel prize winner, who ended the Cold War without bloodshed but failed to prevent the collapse of the Soviet Union, died on Tuesday at the age of 91, hospital officials in Moscow said.

The passing of Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union and for many the man who restored democracy to then-communist-ruled European nations, was mourned Wednesday as the loss of a leader who changed the world and for a time gave hope for peace among the superpowers.

Here are some of the reactions to his death from across the world.

Russian President Vladimir Putin

Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin expressed his “deep sympathies” over Gorbachev’s death, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian news agencies.

“Tomorrow he will send a telegram of condolences to his family and friends,” said Peskov.

UN chief Antonio Guterres

Guterres in a statement praised Gorbachev as “a one-of-a-kind statesman who changed the course of history” and “did more than any other individual to bring about the peaceful end of the Cold War”.

The statement, which was posted on Twitter, said the world has lost “a towering global leader, committed multilateralist and tireless advocate for peace”.

French President Emmanuel Macron

Macron praised Gorbachev as a “man of peace” and sent his “condolences for the death of Mikhail Gorbachev, a man of peace whose choices opened up a path of liberty for Russians. His commitment to peace in Europe changed our shared history”.

US President Joe Biden

Biden hailed Gorbachev as a “rare leader” who made the world a safer place.

“These were the acts of a rare leader – one with the imagination to see that a different future was possible and the courage to risk his entire career to achieve it,” Biden said in a statement, referring to Gorbachev’s democratic reforms.

“The result was a safer world and greater freedom for millions of people. Mikhail Gorbachev was a man of remarkable vision,” Biden added.

EU chief Ursula von der Leyen

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen hailed Gorbachev as a “trusted and respected leader” who “opened the way for a free Europe”.

His “crucial role” in bringing down the Iron Curtain, which symbolised the division of the world into communist and capitalist blocs, and ending the Cold War left a legacy “we will not forget”, she wrote on Twitter.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson

Outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he “always admired the courage and integrity” Gorbachev showed to bring the Cold War to a peaceful conclusion.

“In a time of Putin’s aggression in Ukraine, his tireless commitment to opening up Soviet society remains an example to us all,” he said in a Twitter post, referring to Moscow’s offensive in its former Soviet neighbour.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida

Kishida noted Gorbachev’s important role in the reduction of nuclear weapons held by the Soviet Union and United States, saying he had made “great achievements.”

“Mr. Gorbachev, who possessed great strategic vision and decisive execution, played a very important role,” he said.

Gorbachev, the last Soviet president, forged arms reduction deals with the United States and partnerships with Western powers to remove the Iron Curtain that had divided Europe since World War Two and bring about the reunification of Germany.

But his internal reforms helped weaken the Soviet Union to the point where it fell apart, a moment that President Vladimir Putin has called the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the twentieth century.

After decades of Cold War tension and confrontation, Gorbachev brought the Soviet Union closer to the West than at any point since World War Two.

“He gave freedom to hundreds of millions of people in Russia and around it, and also half of Europe,” said former Russian liberal opposition leader Grigory Yavlinsky. “Few leaders in history have had such a decisive influence on their time.”

But Gorbachev saw his legacy wrecked late in life, as the invasion of Ukraine brought Western sanctions crashing down on Moscow, and politicians in both Russia and the West began to speak of a new Cold War.

“Gorbachev died in a symbolic way when his life’s work, freedom, was effectively destroyed by Putin,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

He will be buried in Moscow’s Novodevichy Cemetery next to his wife Raisa, who died in 1999, said Tass, citing the foundation that the ex-Soviet leader set up once he left office.

“We are all orphans now. But not everyone realizes it,” said Alexei Venediktov, head of a liberal media radio outlet that closed down after coming under pressure over its coverage of the Ukraine war.

When pro-democracy protests rocked Soviet bloc nations in communist Eastern Europe in 1989, Gorbachev refrained from using force – unlike previous Kremlin leaders who had sent tanks to crush uprisings in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.

But the protests fuelled aspirations for autonomy in the 15 republics of the Soviet Union, which disintegrated over the next two years in chaotic fashion.

Gorbachev – who was briefly deposed in an August 1991 coup by party hardliners – struggled vainly to prevent that collapse.

“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 protocol office when he was Soviet leader.

On becoming general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party in 1985, aged just 54, he had set out to revitalise the system by introducing limited political and economic freedoms, but his reforms spun out of control.

“He was a good man – he was a decent man. I think his tragedy is in a sense that he was too decent for the country he was leading,” said Gorbachev biographer William Taubman, a professor emeritus at Amherst College in Massachusetts.

-FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and Reuters