- Russian President Vladimir Putin will not attend the funeral of the last USSR leader, Mikhail Gorbachev.
- The funeral will take place next Saturday.
- Gorbachev died Tuesday at the age of 91.
“We know that the main ceremony will take place on September 3, as will the funeral, but the president’s schedule will not allow him to attend,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the press. He explained that Vladimir Putin had already visited the Moscow hospital where Mikhail Gorbachev died to “lay flowers on his coffin”.
After the funeral service, Gorbachev is to be buried in the New Maiden Cemetery for celebrities. There he will lie next to his wife Raissa, who died in 1999.