EU leaders and diplomats attend Gorbachev's funeral in Moscow
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Despite attempting to isolate Russia, EU leaders and diplomats attend former USSR president Mikhail Gorbachev funeral in Moscow.
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Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban attends former USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev's funeral in Moscow (AFP)
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban attends former Former Soviet Union (USSR) president Mikhail Gorbachev’s funeral in Moscow.
On Saturday, Orban paid his tribute to Gorbachev in the House of the Unions in Moscow. He expressed his respects to the grieving family and placed flowers at the foot of Gorbachev's casket.
No meeting between Orban and Putin has been scheduled, according to the Kremlin.
Along with the Hungarian premier, other diplomats present at the memorial service were US Ambassador John Sullivan, British Ambassador Deborah Bronnert, German Ambassador Geza Andreas von Geyr, French Ambassador Pierre Levy, and Spanish Ambassador Marcos Gomez Martinez.
Gorbachev died at 91 years and will be buried in Moscow’s Novodevichy Cemetery next to his wife Raisa, who died in 1999.
The man blamed for the fall of the USSR
Gorbachev served as the last president of the Soviet Union. His policies are blamed by many to have been one of the chief catalyzers for the fall of the USSR.
He sought to consolidate ties with the West and forged arms reduction treaties with the United States, as well as agreements with Western powers, which led to the incorporation of the Democratic People's Republic of Germany into West Germany.
He was highly lenient toward capitalism and the privatization of various sectors of the Soviet Union, and due to his failure to keep the USSR together, one by one, the Soviet Republics were ceded from the union until its collapse on December 26, 1991.
Following the fall of the USSR, Gorbachev appeared controversially in a Pizza Hut commercial, which to this day, is viewed negatively by most of the Russian public.
