A spokesman for Putin said late on Tuesday that the president would send a telegram of condolences to the Gorbachev family.

On Wednesday, Putin made a statement in light of the former Soviet leader’s passing. Here he stated that Gorbachev had “a great influence on world history.”

– He led our country through a period of complex dramatic changes and major foreign policy, economic and social challenges said Putin, according to the news agency Scavenge.

Mourning the fall of the Soviet Union

He has been several times in the past excuse me The collapse of the Soviet Union and called collapse “the greatest geopolitical disaster of the century”.

Nonetheless, he was less inclined to directly criticize Gorbachev.

In a statement on Wednesday, Putin said that Gorbachev understood that reforms were needed and that “he tried to offer his own solutions to acute problems”.

Opinions are divided in Russia

While Mikhail Gorbachev was praised in the West, he was disliked by many Russians who remember the dire economic crisis following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The crisis caused living standards to drop sharply in Russia in the 1990s – as the population gained far greater political freedoms.

Many Russians blame Gorbachev for the economic turmoil that followed his reforms, he wrote Guard. In a poll last year, conducted by Russia’s state voting body, more than 70 percent said Russia was moving in the wrong direction while Gorbachev was in power.

The last leader of the Soviet Union was deeply disliked by those who looked back nostalgically on the communist era and believed the union should never have been dissolved.

Perceptions differ among sections of the population trying to promote democracy and liberal reforms.

– There has never been as much freedom in Russia as in the late 1980s and early 90s. That’s the plus, Russian journalist Mikhail Fishman wrote after Gorbachev’s death.