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Former, also the last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, has passed away at the age of 91.
While his demise has elicited mixed reactions, Gorbachev will be best remembered for presiding over the collapse of the Soviet Union, obliterating the Berlin Wall, and spearheading spectacular reforms.
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As relations between the United States and the unassailable Soviet Union tanked, Gorbachev was instrumental in the surreal battery of audacious reforms that changed the course of the 20th century -- having held an historic 1985 summit with former American president, Ronald Reagan.
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While the duo clashed during an Iceland meeting, by December 1987, they inked a treaty to rein in the nuclear weapons threat.
The next year, Reagan visited Moscow as the pair toured the famous Red Square.
Grbachev's charisma drew many Western leaders to him given his pitch for economic openness, anti-political stagnation and restructuring.
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RONALD REAGAN, Former United States President (June 12, 1987; Berlin Wall Speech):
Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate.
Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.
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The Berlin Wall's collapse wouldn't have materialised without Gorbachev's ephemeral six-year reign, freeing thousands of political prisoners and those living under tyranny.
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But that wrecking ball ricocheted across the Union, eventually culminating with the 1991 implosion of the Soviet Union.
The Union shrank in size and fragmented into fifteen new nations.
A 3-day coup was once instigated in a bid to depose him, but failed.
With relations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union thawing, the Cold War came to an end, and so did Gorbachev's reign, paving the way for incumbent president Vladimir Putin's meteoric rise to power.
But many defended Gorbachev and said he never intended to decimate the Soviet Union.
Still, reaction across the world over his death was mixed.
Many of his countrymen still pour scorn on him for the litany of setbacks.
But it was tributes that poured in from the West.
U.S. President Joe Biden portrayed Gorbachev as a statesman who embraced democratic reforms for a better way forward. He said it was courageous of him to stake his career on the cause.
Calling him a unique and valiant Soviet leader are outgoing British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, French President Emmanuel Macron, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
Gorbachev, a man who lived his life towering above others in his quest for peace, but also stultified by conservatives, departed at a Moscow hospital on Tuesday.
Gorbachev was 91 years old.
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