Former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev died at the age of 91, according to Russian media on Tuesday.

The Central Hospital of the Russian Presidency said in a statement: "On Tuesday evening, after a long struggle with a serious illness, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev passed away."

Gorbachev came to power in 1985, and between 1990 and 1991 he held the position of President of the Soviet Union before ultimately being forced to resign.

Gorbachev was the last to rule the Soviet Union before its collapse in 1991, but he ended the Cold War between East and West and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990.

Gorbachev made agreements with the United States to reduce weapons and established partnerships with Western powers to lift the iron curtain that had divided Europe since World War II.

When protests swept through the communist Soviet bloc countries in Eastern Europe in 1989, he refrained from using force, unlike previous Kremlin leaders who sent tanks to crush protests in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.

But the protests fueled aspirations for autonomy in 15 republics of the Soviet Union, which disintegrated over the following two years in a way marked by chaos.

Gorbachev tried to prevent this collapse, but his efforts failed.

Russian President Vladimir Putin was absent from Gorbachev's funeral and refused to grant the man who failed to prevent the collapse of the Soviet empire the full official honors that Boris Yeltsin received.

Mikhail Gorbachev will be buried on Saturday after a public ceremony at the Column Hall in Moscow.

Gorbachev holds a special place in the West because he enabled Eastern Europe to escape Soviet communist control, but he is not popular locally due to the chaos that resulted from his reforms known as Perestroika.

It is worth noting that the grand hall, overlooking the Kremlin, has hosted the funerals of Soviet leaders Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Leonid Brezhnev. A guards of honor parade will be held in his farewell, but his funeral will not be official.