Brussels 31.08.2022 Russia President Vladimir Putin expresses deepest condolences on death of Gorbachev,91, -Interfax news agency reports.

Lauded in the West for helping bring down the Berlin Wall and end the Cold War without bloodshed, Mikhail Gorbachev was despised at home as the gravedigger of the communist Soviet Union. He has died at age 91

The former Soviet president, who died on Tuesday aged 91, set out to revitalise the sclerotic Communist system through democratic and economic reform; it was never his intention to abolish it.

But he unleashed forces beyond his control, and found himself occupying a shrinking middle ground between diehards intent on preserving centralised power and separatists set on dismantling it.