Later that day, Gorbachev’s body was buried next to his beloved wife Raisa at the Novodevichy Cemetery, home to many prominent Russians, including the country’s first post-Soviet president, Boris Yeltsin. Raisa died of leukemia in 1999. The procession carrying the coffin to the cemetery was led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitry Muratov, publisher of the Novaya Gazeta newspaper. Gorbachev used funds from his own Nobel Prize to help launch the paper, which was Russia’s last major Kremlin-critical news outlet before it was suspended in March. Despite the pomp, the decision not to hold a state funeral allowed Putin not to attend or invite foreign leaders. Instead, Putin privately laid flowers on Gorbachev’s coffin at a Moscow hospital where he died on Thursday. He spent Saturday busy with a series of work meetings, an international phone call and preparations for a business forum, according to his spokesman. The snub was a reflection of the strained relationship between the two men. Putin has repeatedly accused him of failing to secure written commitments from the West that would have blocked NATO’s eastward expansion. Gorbachev had supported Putin’s 2008 invasion of Georgia and 2014 annexation of Crimea, but in an interview with Reuters this week, Pavel Palazchenko, Gorbachev’s former aide and translator, said he disagreed with the February invasion of Ukraine . “It really crushed him emotionally and psychologically,” she said.
