Former KGB chief Kryuchkov dies in Moscow

(November, 26, Moscow, Sri Lanka Guardian) Former KGB (Komityet Gosudarstvyennoy Bezopasnosti) chief Vladimir Kryuchkov, one of the organizers of the failed coup against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991, has died aged 83 of heart attack. News agencies, referring to the Federal Security Service (FSB), said Kryuchkov had died in a Moscow hospital.

One of leaders of the Soviet state some day, General Kryuchkov died in a usual ward of the elite Central Clinical Hospital. One month ago, on October 23, paramedics delivered the ex-chief Soviet chief spymaster in grave condition to the hospital. At once he was brough to intensive care branch where doctors struggled for his life several days, Moscow newspaper Tvoy den says. Then his condition stabilized a little, threat of an insult passed, the patient was transferred to a cardiology ward. Kryuchkov spent exactly a month in the Central Clinical Hospital where he died on November 23.

It is known that Kryuchkov owed his career rise to Soviet leader Yuri Andropov. He worked alongside Andropov when he served as the Soviet ambassador to Hungary, and oversaw suppression of anti-Communist uprising in Budapest in 1956. When Andropov became KGB chief in 1967, he took Kryuchkov along. In 1974, Kryuchkov was named chief of the KGB's First Main Directorate in charge of spying abroad. Gorbachev appointed Kryuchkov as head of the KGB in 1988. In August 1991, Kryuchkov joined other Communist Party leadership hard-liners who ousted Gorbachev and declared a nationwide state of emergency. Kryuchkov and other coup plotters were jailed but later freed on an amnesty.

In recent years, Kryuchkov raised his public profile, publishing his memoirs and giving numerous interviews in which he accused the West of plotting against Russia. He was frequently invited to Kremlin events by Russian President Vladimir Putin, himself a former KGB official.

Photo: One of last Kryuchkov's pics