Kremlin Says Putin's 'Work Schedule' Will Prevent Him From Attending Gorbachev's Funeral

The Kremlin says Russian President Vladimir Putin will not be able to attend the funeral service of Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader who died earlier this week, because of his work schedule.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Moscow on September 1 that while Gorbachev will not be honored with a full state funeral, the service will have an honor guard and some other elements usually given during such a ceremony.

He added that Putin stopped by the Central Clinical Hospital earlier in the day to bid farewell to the man credited with helping end the Cold War, whose body remains there after he passed away at the age of 91 on August 30 following a prolonged illness.

"Unfortunately, the president’s work schedule will not allow him to do that [attend the service] on September 3, which is why he decided to it today," Peskov said.

Gorbachev's daughter, Irina Virganskaya, has said her father's funeral will be held on September 3 at the historic House of the Unions, where all Soviet leaders, except Nikita Khrushchev, have laid in state. The site is just a short walk away from the Kremlin.

Putin's decision not to attend the funeral highlights the frosty response the Kremlin has had to the death of a man much of the West praised for ushering in political and economic changes known as "glasnost" (openness) and "perestroika" (restructuring) that helped trigger the fall of the Berlin Wall, the reunification of Germany, and ultimately the demise of the Soviet Union.

Putin, who had a strained relationship with Gorbachev and waited nearly a day before publishing a restrained message of condolence for the former leader, has called the collapse of the Soviet Union "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe" of the 20th century.

Gorbachev had carefully criticized Putin, at times, for rolling back democratic reforms and reintroducing elements of repression that seemed more at home during the Soviet era than post-perestroika Russia.

When Boris Yeltsin, who helped sideline Gorbachev to become Russia's first president after the Soviet Union collapsed, died in 2007, Putin declared a national day of mourning and, alongside world leaders, attended a grand state funeral in Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Savior.

The Gorbachev Foundation initially said Russians could bid farewell at a ceremony in the House of the Union from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on September 3. However, it later said, without explanation, that the service had been cut by two hours and would now run from 10 a.m. to noon Moscow time.

Gorbachev will be laid to rest at Moscow's Novodevichy cemetery next to his wife, Raisa Gorbacheva, who died in 1999 of leukemia at the age of 67.

With reporting by Interfax and TASS