This is how Putin bid farewell to Mikhail Gorbachev - Video

President Putin venerated Gorbachev's coffin at hospital — he will not be able to attend the funeral due to the tight schedule. Putin said his goodbye to USSR's last leader in person as he visited the hospital, where Gorbachev's coffin is being kept.

"Before leaving [for Kaliningrad], the president stopped at the Moscow Central Clinical Hospital and said goodbye to Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev,” Putin's official spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Speaking about the status of the funeral of the ex-president, Peskov said that they would contain elements of a state funeral, in particular, a guard of honor.

"There will be elements of a state funeral, there will be a guard of honor, the ceremony will be organized accordingly,” he said.

Mikhail Gorbachev will be buried on Saturday, September 3. The funeral ceremony will be held in the Hall of Columns of the House of Unions. The politician will be buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery next to his wife Raisa, who died in 1999.

Mikhail Gorbachv, the ex-president of the USSR, died in the evening of August 30 in Moscow. He was 91 years old. Doctors from the Moscow Central Clinical Hospital sad that Gorbachev died after a severe and prolonged illness. He had a kidney disease, and it was said that the politician had been on hemodialysis for the past few years.