Breaking: Ex-Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev dies at 91

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last ever head of the Soviet Union, has died at the age of 91, Russian state media has reported.

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

Gorbachev chaired the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and was the nation’s head of state from 1988 until its collapse in 1991.

His time in office was marked by tumult and the carving out of a new relationship between the Soviet Union and the West amid economic hardship and fiscal mismanagement within the USSR itself.

Gorbachev remains a divisive figure, viewed as a hero in the West and ex-Soviet states for ending the Cold War without bloodshed, but is reviled by Russian nationalists for bringing about the collapse of the Soviet Union.

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The Soviet leader forged arms reduction deals with the United States and partnerships with Western powers to peel back the Iron Curtain that had divided Europe since World War Two and bring about the reunification of Germany.

When pro-democracy protests swept across the Soviet bloc nations of communist Eastern Europe in 1989, he refrained from using force – unlike previous Kremlin leaders who had sent tanks to crush uprisings in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.

But the protests fuelled aspirations for autonomy in the 15 republics of the Soviet Union, which disintegrated over the next two years in chaotic fashion. Gorbachev struggled in vain to prevent that collapse.

He had repeatedly criticised Vladimir Putin and his party in recent years, and had expressed “great concern” about the worsening relations between Russia and the West under his leadership.