Gorbachev will be laid to rest at the weekend, but no state funeral for former leader, says Russian media

The funeral will take place on Saturday

There will be no state funeral for the former president of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, a Russian news agency reported on Wednesday. “There are no plans to organise a state funeral for Gorbachev,” sources told the Interfax agency.

Earlier, the Gorbachev Foundation told the same agency that its founder would be buried at Moscow’s Novodevichy Cemetery next to his wife, Raisa, who died in 1999. Gorbachev died on Tuesday at a central Moscow hospital at the age of 91, after a long illness.

The funeral will take place on Saturday, Russian news agencies reported, citing Gorbachev’s daughter and a spokesperson for his foundation. It is reported that it will take place in the famous Hall of Columns inside Moscow’s House of Unions, the same place where Josef Stalin’s body was put on display following his death in 1953.

The service will be open to the public.

Dozens of high-ranking politicians, poets, royals and intellectuals have been buried at the cemetery since it was established in the 16th century – among them Boris Yeltsin, who was Russia’s first president and Gorbachev’s political rival. Nikita Khrushchev is the only other Soviet leader buried there, with most others having been laid to rest beside the walls of the Kremlin on Red Square.

It is not known whether or not Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin will attend Gorbachev’s funeral.

A 2017 poll found that just 15 per cent of Russians held a favourable opinion of the last Soviet leader. And while many in the West gushed over his life’s achievements following the news of his passing, reaction in Russia was more muted.

Mikhail Gorbachev and his wife, Raisa. The former Soviet leader will be buried next to her at the Novodevichy Cemetery (AFP/Getty)

Pro-Kremlin commentators and politicians criticised his legacy on Russia’s state-owned media.

Gorbachev’s passing was the first item on Russia’s flagship Channel One news bulletin, where a five-minute retrospective emphasised his common touch and desire to improve the Soviet economy. It also suggested that he had lacked decisiveness and had trusted the United States too much.

Another channel, Rossiya 24, relegated the news of his death to third place, reporting it 12 minutes into its morning bulletin after items on an educational forum in Moscow and a planned visit by the UN nuclear watchdog to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant near the front line of fighting between Russia and Ukraine.