KGB Tells of Foiling Kremlin Attacks
Special KGB guards who protect Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and other top leaders have stopped would-be assassins who tried to enter government buildings with sawed-off shotguns and knives, according to a report Thursday in the Communist Party daily Pravda.
“Every month our men in the Kremlin, on Red Square and other places expose and detain about a dozen people with criminal intentions,” a KGB general, Yuri S. Plekhanov, told Pravda.
Even with glasnost , Gorbachev’s policy of greater openness, officials previously had not discussed attempted attacks on top leaders.
Plekhanov said guards for top leaders have not had to use weapons since World War II. Recently, he said, a man in the reception room of the Communist Party Central Committee pulled a shotgun but was disarmed.
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