Orban to attend farewell ceremony for Gorbachev

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban will attend the farewell ceremony for the first President of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev, which is taking place today in Moscow in the Column Hall of the House of the Unions. This was announced on Twitter by the representative of the Hungarian government Zoltan Kovacs.

“Prime Minister Orban will visit Moscow this morning to pay tribute to the late Mikhail Gorbachev,” Kovacs wrote.

The Hungarian prime minister does not plan to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow during this trip, informed RIA Novosti press secretary of the head of the Russian state Dmitry Peskov.

“Not. As far as we know, he will only fly in to say goodbye to Gorbachev. There were no wishes for meetings,” Peskov said.

According to the agency, at the farewell ceremony in the Hall of Columns present daughter of Mikhail Gorbachev Irina and his granddaughter. Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of Russia Dmitry Medvedev said goodbye to the first and last president of the USSR. Vladimir Putin, according to Peskov, to attend the farewell ceremony can not due to a busy work schedule.

The ceremony in the Hall of Columns will take place from 10:00 to 12:00, it was originally supposed to last four hours. Gorbachev will be buried today at the Novodevichy Cemetery next to his wife.

Gorbachev died on the evening of August 30 at the Central Clinical Hospital after a long illness. He was 91 years old. Putin expressed his condolences on the death of the politician, noting that the last Secretary General of the USSR fell “a period of complex, dramatic changes.”