Schedule constraints: Vladimir Putin will not attend friend Mikhail Gorbachev’s funeral

The Russian president said in a statement: ” “He led our country during a period of complex, dramatic changes, large-scale foreign policy, economic and social challenges.

“He deeply understood that reforms were necessary, he strove to offer his own solutions to urgent problems.”

Mr Putin also noted the “great humanitarian, charitable, education activities” carried out by Mr Gorbachev in the years before his death aged 91.

Mr Gorbachev was known for ending the Cold War without bloodshed but failed to prevent the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991.

When Mr Gorbachev became general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party in 1985, he set out to revitalize the communist system and shape a new union based on a more equal partnership between the 15 USSR republics.

However, he attempted political and economic reforms simultaneously and on too ambitious a scale, unleashing forces he could not control.

As pro-democracy protests swept across communist Eastern Europe in 1989, he refrained from using force – unlike predecessors who had deployed tanks to crush uprisings in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.

The demonstrations fuelled aspirations for autonomy in the republics, and the last Soviet leader failed to anticipate the strength of nationalist feelings.