US President Joe Biden hailed former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who passed away Wednesday in Moscow aged 91, as a "rare leader" who made the world safer.
"These were the acts of a rare leader – one with the imagination to see that a different future was possible and the courage to risk his entire career to achieve it," Biden said in a statement, referring to Gorbachev's democratic reforms. "The result was a safer world and greater freedom for millions of people."