Flags will be flown at half-staff on Saturday in Berlin on the occasion of the funeral of the last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, which will take place on the same day in Moscow, the leadership of the German capital announced on Thursday, according to AFP and Agerpres.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last great leader of the Cold War and who played a decisive role in the process that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, died on Tuesday night at the age of 91.

“We want to pay proper tribute to our honorable citizen and for what he did for political change in the GDR,” Berlin’s Interior Minister Iris Spranger said.

She noted that Mikhail Gorbachev prepared the ground for the reunification of Germany, which took place on October 3, 1990, only a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

“Germany owes him a lot”

Politicians from all German parties expressed their gratitude to the former Soviet leader, and some called for a street or square in Berlin to be named after him.

The leader of the Christian Social Union (CSU) conservative party and the Prime Minister of Bavaria, Markus Zeder, called for a memorial ceremony in honor of Gorbachev. “Germany owes him a lot, he is one of the fathers of reunification, and he also offered freedom to millions of people,” Zeder said in Friday’s edition of the Münchener Merkur daily.

At the other end of the German political scene, Gregor Gizi, former head of the radical left party Die Linke, also called for a ceremony that would highlight the differences between Gorbachev and current Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The latter will not attend Saturday’s funeral for Gorbachev, whose legacy is controversial and infuriating in Russia.

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