UPDATED: Putin will not be attending Gorbachev’s funeral – Kremlin

MOSCOW, Sept 1 (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin will not attend the funeral of the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, on Saturday because of schedule constraints, the Kremlin said.

In a call with reporters, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin had paid his respects on Thursday morning by visiting and laying a wreath at Moscow’s Central Clinical Hospital, where Gorbachev died on Tuesday.

“Unfortunately, the president’s work schedule will not allow him to do this on Sept. 3, so he decided to do it today,” Peskov said.

He added that Gorbachev’s funeral would have “elements” of a state funeral, including a guard of honour, and that the state was helping with the organisation.

The funeral of the Soviet Union’s last leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who died on Tuesday in Moscow aged 91, will take place on Saturday, Russian news agencies reported, citing Gorbachev’s daughter and a spokesperson for his foundation.

It will be held in the famous Hall of Columns inside Moscow’s House of Unions, agencies reported, the same place where Josef Stalin’s body was put on display following his death in 1953.

The service will be open to the public and Gorbachev will then be buried at Moscow’s Novodevichy Cemetery, TASS news agency cited Vladimir Polyakov, press secretary for the Gorbachev Foundation, as saying.

RIA news agency later cited Pavel Palazchenko, head of media relations at the Gorbachev Foundation, as saying the ceremony in the Hall of Columns would be organised by the Putin administration’s protocol service.

“There is no information as to whether this is considered a state funeral or not,” he told RIA.

Many high-ranking politicians, intellectuals, poets and royals have been buried at the Novodevichy cemetery since it was established in the 16th century – among them Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s first president and Gorbachev’s political rival.

It is also the resting place of Gorbachev’s wife, Raisa, who died in 1999. Nikita Khrushchev is the only other Soviet leader buried there, with most others laid to rest by the Kremlin’s walls on Red Square.

When Yeltsin died in 2007, he was buried with full state honours. President Vladimir Putin, his successor, declared a national day of mourning.

Putin earlier on Wednesday sent Gorbachev’s relatives his condolences via telegram. The Kremlin hailed the late politician as an extraordinary global statesman who helped end the Cold War, but had been badly wrong about the prospect of rapprochement with the “bloodthirsty” West.

Reporting by Reuters Editing by Andrew Osborn, Alexandra Hudson