Russians paid their final respects to the last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, in a ceremony held in Moscow without much fanfare and with Russian president Vladimir Putin notably absent.
Several thousand mourners queued up to quietly file past Mr Gorbachev’s open casket as it was flanked by honour guards under the Russian flag in the historic Hall of Columns.
The farewell ceremony in Moscow’s House of the Unions was followed by a closed funeral in the Novodevichy cemetery.
A Kremlin official had said the funeral would not be attended by the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, due to his “work schedule”.
Asked what specific business will keep Mr Putin busy on Saturday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the president will have a series of working meetings, an international phone call, and needs to prepare for a business forum in Russia’s far east he is scheduled to attend next week.
Nonetheless, the security presence was heavy in central Moscow, where armed police and armoured vehicles were stationed downtown.
Upon entering the building, mourners saw guards flanking a large photo of Mr Gorbachev standing with a broad smile, a reminder of the cheerful vigour he brought to the Soviet leadership after a series of dour, ailing predecessors.
His daughter Irina and his two granddaughters sat beside the coffin.
The grand, chandeliered hall lined by columns hosted balls for the nobility under the tsars and served as a venue for high-level meetings and congresses along with state funerals during Soviet times.
Bearing bouquets of carnations and roses, mourners spoke of “paying tribute” to Mr Gorbachev’s legacy and the “gift of freedom” he gave the country, despite the anger many Russians felt toward him for hastening the end of the Soviet Union.
He remains a hero for many liberal Russians.
“I am here to pay tribute to a great man,” said Galina Ivanchenko, who was carrying a bouquet of carnations. “He took on a burden that none of us could have and he should be remembered for that, despite what everyone says.”
She said she hoped with time more Russians would remember him more fondly in the future.
“Who hasn’t made mistakes?” she asked. “He should be forgiven. He should never have been blamed.”
The turnout was large enough that the viewing was extended more than an hour beyond the stated two hours.
After several hours the coffin was taken out of the hall in a procession led by Dmitry Muratov, the Nobel Peace prize-winning editor-in-chief of independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, which Gorbachev helped found.
The coffin was taken to Moscow’s prestigious Novodevichy cemetery, where it was lowered into the grave to the sounds of a military band playing the Russian national anthem and a gun salute.
Mr Gorbachev was buried next to his wife, Raisa, who died from cancer in 1999.
Despite the choice of the prestigious venue, the Kremlin stopped short of calling it a state funeral, with Mr Peskov saying the ceremony will have “elements” of one, such as honorary guards, and the government’s assistance in organising it. He would not describe how it will differ from a fully-fledged state funeral.
Declaring a state funeral for Mr Gorbachev would have obliged Mr Putin to attend it and would have required Moscow to invite foreign leaders, something that it was apparently reluctant to do amid soaring tensions with the West after sending troops to Ukraine.
Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of Russia’s security council chaired by Mr Putin who served as Russia’s president in 2008-2012, attended the farewell ceremony.
He then released a post on a messaging app channel, referring to the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union and accusing the US and its allies of trying to engineer Russia’s break-up, a policy he described as a “chess game with death”.
Some foreign leaders did attend the funeral, including Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban, who has often been critical of the Western sanctions against Russia.
The British, US and German ambassadors also attended.
The farewell viewing was shadowed by the awareness that the openness Mr Gorbachev championed has been stifled under Mr Putin.
“I want to thank him for my childhood of freedom, which we don’t have today,” said mourner Ilya, a financial services worker in his early 30s who declined to give his last name.
“I am a son of perestroika,” he said, using the Russian word for Mr Gorbachev’s reform, or reconstruction, initiatives.
The modest ceremony contrasts with a lavish 2007 state funeral given to Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s first post-Soviet leader who anointed Mr Putin as his preferred successor and set the stage for him to win the presidency by stepping down.
Mr Putin, who once lamented the collapse of the Soviet Union as the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century”, has avoided explicit personal criticism of Mr Gorbachev but has repeatedly blamed him for failing to secure written commitments from the West that would rule out Nato’s expansion east.
The issue has marred Russia-West relations for decades and fomented tensions that exploded when the Russian leader sent troops into Ukraine on February 24th.
In a carefully phrased letter of condolence released on Wednesday avoiding explicit praise or criticism, Mr Putin described Mr Gorbachev as a man who left “an enormous impact on the course of world history”,
Mr Putin added: “He led the country during difficult and dramatic changes, amid large-scale foreign policy, economic and society challenges.
“He deeply realised that reforms were necessary and tried to offer his solutions for the acute problems.”
The Kremlin’s ambivalence about Mr Gorbachev was reflected in state television broadcasts, which described his worldwide acclaim and grand expectations generated by his reforms, but held him responsible for plunging the country into political turmoil and economic woes and failing to properly defend the country’s interests in talks with the West. — Guardian/AP