Last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, 91, ‘seriously ill’ with kidney trouble – World News

Former USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev, 91, is on dialysis for a serious kidney condition after suffering repeated and “worsening” health problems, Russian media outlet Mash reported

The last Soviet head of state Mikhail Gorbachev is suffering from a severe kidney disease, it was said today.

The former USSR president is on dialysis, Mash Media Outlet said.

The 91-year-old, who spearheaded the opening of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, has repeatedly suffered from “worsening” health problems, he added.

Gorbachev introduced the reform and opening up of the communist system known as “perestroika” and “glasnost”.

The Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991.

News of his illness comes as critics accuse Vladimir Putin of invading Ukraine to start rebuilding the USSR.

Gorbachev Foundation spokesman Vladimir Polyakov told Life News that Gorbachev had been receiving treatment for kidney problems, including dialysis, for several years.

He did not comment on the seriousness of the statesman’s current condition.

Gorbachev’s wife Raisa, the former First Lady of the Soviet Union, died in 1999.

Separately, it was announced that Gennady Burbulis, the senior Russian official who confirmed the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991, died suddenly on Sunday at the age of 76 in Azerbaijan.

Two other leaders who signed the USSR’s death certificate, Ukrainian Leonid Kravchuk and then Belarusian leader Stanislav Shushkevich, died last month, aged 88 and 87 respectively.

The other participant – the first Russian President Boris Yeltsin – died in 2007.

It emerged last week that an old Soviet nuclear missile base in Belarus is likely being prepared to house Putin’s latest arsenal of deadly nuclear weapons.

On Sunday, June 14, an “inspection” of the abandoned 369th Missile Regiment facility was reportedly taking place.

In Soviet times, rockets capable of causing “dozens of Hiroshimas” were stationed there.

This could be the case again in times to come, although this would be even more devastating if Putin’s hypersonic nuclear missiles such as Sarmat – Satan-2 – and Tsirkon (Zirkon) were deployed.

A referendum in Belarus in February again allowed the country to station nuclear weapons and act as a permanent base for Russian troops.

The old Zhitkovichi nuclear weapons base is located near the village of Cheretyanka in the Gomel region of Belarus, which borders Ukraine.

Military unit 42691, callsign “Sad”, housed nuclear weapons from 1959 to 1996, five years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Belarus gave up its inherited nuclear arsenal in 1996, which was returned to Moscow.

The revelation of a recent “inspection” of the base came from the Belaruski Hayun Telegram channel, which monitors military activities.

A Mi-8 helicopter of the Belarusian Armed Forces took off from an air base in Machyulishchi to the former military unit 41738 near the village of Volma (Minsk region), where the so-called “Platform 400.

Dome’, the command center of the Russian Armed Forces in Belarus,” the broadcaster said.