By the time Thomas Sankara was ousted and killed on 15 October 1987 in a military coup orchestrated by Blaise Compaoré, the government of Mikhail Gorbachev was far too busy with demokratizatsiya, perestroika and glasnost to continue near any of its previously major engagements in Burkina Faso and Africa overall. When the Revolutions of 1989 began, the Burkinabé state debt to the USSR amounted to 4.3 million rubles. Burkina Faso recognized the Russian Federation as the USSR's successor state following its dissolution in 1991. The old respective Burkinabé–Soviet embassies closed down later during the 1990s due to funding issues.