Mikhail Gorbachev, ex-Soviet leader, dead at 91

The former president of the former USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, is dead at the age of 91

Russian news agencies reported hospital officials declaring the prominent Soviet leader dead.

Mr Gorbachev’s office said earlier that he was undergoing treatment at the hospital.

He will be remembered as serving as the last Soviet president.

He helped end the Cold War without bloodshed but failed to prevent the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“The country was loaded to the brim with weapons. And it would have immediately pushed the country into a civil war,” he famously said.

Gorbachev was a committed communist, but forged arms reduction deals with the United States and partnerships with Western powers to remove the Iron Curtain that had divided Europe since World War II.

Unlike previous Kremlin leaders who had sent tanks to crush uprisings in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, when pro-democracy protests erupted across the Soviet bloc nations of communist Eastern Europe in 1989, he withheld his people from using force.

According to Reuters, Gorbachev struggled in vain to prevent that collapse.