Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin will be buried at Moscow’s Novodevichy Cemetery on Wednesday, the Kremlin press service has said.

Yeltsin died of heart failure on Monday afternoon at the age of 76. He died in the Central Clinical Hospital, RIA Novosti reported, citing Sergei Mironov, head of the presidential administration’s medical centre.

Although Yeltsin was initially admired abroad for his defiance of the monolithic Communist system, many Russians will remember him mostly for presiding over the steep decline of their nation.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet president, summed up the complexity of Yeltsin’s political life in a condolence statement minutes after the death was announced. He referred to Yeltsin as one “on whose shoulders are both great deeds for the country and serious errors,” according to Interfax news agency.

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