Former KGB chief Kryuchkov dies, aged 83: agencies
MOSCOW (AFP) — Vladimir Kryuchkov, the former head of the Soviet KGB and a ringleader in an attempted coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, has died, Russian media reported Sunday. He was 83.
Kryuchkov "died Friday evening in Moscow, 23 November," ITAR-TASS quoted the Foreign Intelligence Service as saying.
Interfax reported that Kryuchkov had suffered from an unidentified long-term illness. His burial is planned for Tuesday, ITAR-TASS said.
As KGB chairman Kryuchkov led a coup by the self-described "Emergency Committee" against Gorbachev in August 1991. The failed attempt to take over the failing Soviet regime ended after three days and the Soviet Union collapsed in December of the same year.
Kryuchkov was sacked and arrested after the coup, then later pardoned.
Although the KGB was disbanded, the modern version, known as the Federal Security Service and formerly headed by President Vladimir Putin, is increasingly powerful.
Kryuchkov began his rise as a diplomat. He served in Hungary under then ambassador Yury Andropov, a future Soviet leader, during the brutal suppression by Soviet forces of a 1956 uprising.
In 1967 Kryuchkov joined the KGB and in 1988 he became KGB chairman.
