Gorbachev recovering from artery operation
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev is recovering after undergoing an operation in Germany on a key artery in the neck that supplies blood to the brain, his foundation said today.
Doctors operated yesterday on Gorbachev’s carotid artery at a clinic in Munich, Germany, where the 75-year-old was rushed to hospital on Sunday, the Gorbachev Foundation said on its website.
“The post-operation phase is proceeding normally,” it said. Gorbachev has had no major health problems in the past.
Gorbachev went to a hospital in Moscow about 10 days ago feeling tired and somewhat unwell after a busy year, and doctors advised him to cancel a trip to Italy planned for last week, according to his aide, Vladimir Polyakov.
He had been scheduled to travel to Rome on Thursday for an annual meeting of Nobel Peace Prize laureates organised by his foundation and city hall.
Polyakov said over the weekend that Gorbachev had spent about half his time this year travelling and had three books published since March, with a fourth coming out soon.
“He probably worked too hard and got tired out,” Polyakov said.
Gorbachev radically changed the Soviet Union with his liberal glasnost and perestroika reforms in the late 1980s, helping unleash forces that pulled the country apart and led to his resignation in December 1991 as president of a nation that had essentially ceased to exist.
Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990, he runs the Gorbachev Foundation – an organisation devoted to international issues including globalisation, security, weapons of mass destruction, environmental and natural resources and poverty.
More popular abroad than in Russia, where many blame him for the Soviet collapse, he travels frequently.
