story. dynamics. is all. this is all t.v. land friday at the mall and kids european stocks are plummeting get off the shelf falls in a new fears of a world recession. moscow cautions against international calls for change in syria saying president needs time to implement promised change it's. also twenty years to the days since an attempted coup by a group of hard line. against then president mikhail gorbachev while failing to talk all the government has helped bring about the eventual end of the soviet union

. non-swimmers in russia's far east to britain by terror to two people with savage by showing since today's attacks that have never been seen before in the country the hugs the gulf the shark responsible. now an aussie get the inside story on the military coup against. which i'm full did it all it's ninety ninety one and follow each step of the historic event in our special report that's next. central moscow moscow's regional k.g.b. headquarters. morning of august the nineteenth one nine hundred ninety one. this is the officer and. the events of the day the could have reversed the country's history. it was an attempt to depose president mikhail

gorbachev put his reforms on hold. tanks and other hardware but they moved into moscow. the city's key points have been taken over. the. borders the nineteenth one nine hundred ninety one monday only in the morning teacher tatiana yakovlev a switch to t.v. on a sort of following picture of the usual programme in every channels broadcasting tchaikovsky's famous ballet. the port of call which i turned the t.v. on to check the latest news and i was surprised to see swan lake everywhere i was switching the t.v. channels for a long time thinking maybe there was something wrong with my t.v. set. at the same time as the ballot will cast more than seven

hundred tanks and armored personnel carriers were being stationed in the streets the plotters were in the criminal. meanwhile moscow's so-called white house was at the center of civil resistance at the time it housed the russian parliament where the people's deputies met in session. it was past seven in the morning when the security chief came to my place. for work when i opened the door it's all b. i had better go to the white house right away. as far as i could tell there was a coup going on in the country that's how i learned about it or you would decide to take a roundabout route instead of going straight to this building for. the coup was led by top brass and high ranking communist officials they had expected to get support from the population who were dissatisfied with the long drawn process

of perestroika. they decided to make short work of gorbachev reforms. the situation was quite right the country was in turmoil. there was a revolt of the hungry but able standing in line for sausages stoop to fist fights that there were curvaceous of sort of jism a consumer market. but the country's president waved good bye to everybody and headed down south to the career to relax. the crimean peninsula southern shore serbia president mikhail gorbachev's private residence in the village of forests. both it and scores of surrounding head became a prison for the head of state here he spent several days and what amounted to confinement but there were up a side can be seen from all sides you get an almost bird's eye view of it from the amount the rude leading to the residence can easily be blocked with stones after

those events the joke here was that gorbachev's residence must have been deliberately built in this place so that he could be easily cut off from the outside world is going to go through where the. k.g.b. colonel tolstoy was directly involved in the events of those days he's a direct descendant a name sake of the celebrated russians novelist leo tolstoy. before he rose to the rank of colonel he served as a bodyguard on august the eighteenth one nine hundred ninety one top k.g.b. officials ordered him to block all exits from the group of residents of that i have no idea what would have happened if gorbachev and others had tried to escape from the residence or what i do think he would have faced very unpleasant consequences for. this is exclusive footage of the residence of the first savior president

the splendid park was laid out almost on bare rocks this have special significance because gorbachev was known to be very fond of strolling by the seaside. whatever for visa arizona seeders these pines and the shrubs were all planted just before the territory was to be commissioned it in one nine hundred eighty eight was that it was a short while before mikhail gorbachev's first visit here. the crimean residence was code named terra trees and k.g.b. documentation the interior design of the main building reflected the wishes of race of robots over the president's wife she was with mikhail gorbachev throughout the forests deal. with homes where you really built what i would describe as internal defenses there men carrying guns with live ammunition were

posted all over the place they were under strict orders not to allow public asians for work on. the soviet president study was on the second floor close to the hole it was here that mikhail gorbachev learned about his complete isolation from the outside world. child study looks just like it was back then for this is his desk. and that telephone was meant for communicating with government officials. for the lion was shut down at four pm on august eighteenth. gorbachev remained in his residence moreover measures to isolate him were reinforced still further valarie shah was the one who guarded the gates to the residence during two k.g.b. officers from moscow kept

a close eye on him along with other local agents. special measures were taken when a truck was stationed on the help prevent helicopters from touching down more a tractor with a trailer outside the gates was meant to prevent the motor vehicles breaking through into the compound. rain for security precautions were introduced throughout . the county general the in teen brain ical of was one of the key figures in the coup attempt on august the eighteenth one thousand nine hundred one in visited gorbachev at his residence in the crimea which you are a nick of asked the serbian president to recognize the legality of the coup. we knew what we were going to do during the night told him all that could somehow be fitted into a state of emergency and gorbachev retorted by exclaiming that

a state of emergency was bonser green machine guns and blood in its wake at the core or even i realized that other people as well as my family would suffer no doubt blood would be spilled certainly in such a vast country as ours this country takes time to get worked up when it does you can hardly stop it my belief is the country's modernization without blood. august nineteenth nine hundred ninety one must go to leaven am i cried armored personnel carriers heading for the city center demonstrators climb one of them chanting no to fascism. hundreds of people gather womanish square in central moscow they are ready to oppose the so-called state committee on the state of the missions people who met each other back then drink to still keep in touch and remember those events.

hello hello hello brothers and seen in a hundred years when my parents woke me up in the morning they told me that a coup was underway i was actively involved in a youth democratic movement so i said if no one i know was arrested right away if this is no could all yes there were tanks but people were blocking them off what kind of coup is it if tanks can be stopped short in their tracks. or. a small radio set as one of the most treasured mementos from those days people used it to listen to the few independent stations that was still on at. one report said the air force refused to side with the crew are cording to another a military garrison in st petersburg also refused to back it it was great to hear that people in many towns were supporting us. please give us a minor radio station called echo of moscow was the main source of news in those

days and k.g.b. shut it down in the first few hours of the coup but whether by fair means or foul it's stuff managed to regain access to the airwaves. at one point we even used telephone lines to reach out to our audience there was no link between the studio and the transmitter so our engineers used an analog telephone line by all accounts those words third bill and signs and there were a few students who assumes it's meanwhile the coup organizers called a press conference in moscow many took note of can now do you know it's trembling hands a named himself the country's head of state planning the call which offered for when ill. the press conference reached a turning point after a question from touchy an american or the then twenty four year old journalist. do you realize that what you have down to do is a coup do you see parallels with your actions in soviet history nineteen seventeen

or nineteen sixty four. versus for your claim that a coup took place during the night. yes i would disagree with you because all legal and constitutional norms were complied with so i bring it up and just say that they looked hesitant would be an understatement i knew they looked as if life was dying out of them and there was no way tell if he left in their faces and she was the eyes they looked like people who had lost a battle before they had a chance to start it. this nineteen. nineteen ninety one zero eight a spontaneous rally began in moscow's my nation asquare a crowd swelled as more and more people arrived the events in moscow are described as ansi constitutional coup there are calls for an open ended general strike.

for an hour in this day on we are protesting on to the larger mansour maps that. notes of fascism no two fascism here five created that right up. culture is the same us i can tell by the already the muslim was worth tell me the first movement failed it changed everything twenty years ago communist party hardliners attempted to derail me help out of a child's efforts to reform the soviet union.

lists. of approach. the future flights mom are to take to the max their show. on august the nineteenth nine hundred ninety one top k.g.b. officials in moscow orders reinforced security precautions and gorbachev's

residence in the crimea on the same day mikhail gorbachev videotaped what has since become a famous address. perhaps. a coup has taken place. this anti constitutional action. is based on a tremendous lie. that there was little chance of the tape being taken out of the compound on the same day coastguards protecting the residence attempted to establish contact with the president as an on line of defense into was serving in one of the k.g.b.'s naval units i was not allowed to communicate with the president therefore i asked my wife to write a note in her own handwriting a note said of the sailors were ready to take the president to a place of his choice one of my subordinates took the note to the security guards asking them to hand it over to gorbachev. when he came back they told him that

nobody will be allowed to approach the residents and intruders will be shot. comatose residence was secured from the sea even better than from the land. and was one of the security guards there during those days nobody could approach the shore within less than four nautical miles without being spotted by the guards if they saw the intruder as a possible threat they were under orders to open fire but they are the three groups on permanent duty scoured the woodlands. snipers were in position on the mountain. there was a soldier with a machine gun on top of the cliff near the base remains of it can feel the theme of their. day for all us have a celebration. health resort for communist functionaries and

their families was near the residence of the soviet president oldest is high season that the resort was crammed with holiday makers to capacity couple fears self of the forest result was in charge of discos and other entertainment programs. go on aug nineteenth i said to student had physician look the country's president mikhail gorbachev is under arrest near here that got shall we cancel the dances you know she said the guests should not suffer let them dance this iteration with gorbachev doesn't concern us. moscow august nineteenth one thousand nine hundred one there it seems when sea water cannons attempt to break through to the downtown area demonstrators damage some of them and force them to turn back. meanwhile the coup organizers ordered the arrest of the president of russia boris

yeltsin at the time he was at his residence near moscow the chief of his security guards alexander korsakoff was with him they drove a service car to moscow and reached the city unhindered. bilton was seated between two guards are you flatly turned down the idea of wearing a bulletproof vest so we simply put it over him just in case. that heavy best weighing nine kilos was of the kind worn in the army but the driver was told to go as fast as he could without stopping no matter what. yeltsin managed to get to the white house where he reunited with his team later he climbed a tank to read out a message to a large crowd that had gathered outside the white house we were playing all the decisions and orders by that committee illegal. by then white house defenders had

set up a makeshift barricade near the building in a bid to block the access of military vehicles. everybody was dragging whatever they could lay their hands on a trolley bus stop there the driver got out and lowered the trolleys the trolley bus was left standing across the road the barricade was here that's how we began blocking all approaches to the building. the crimea the city of sevastopol a soviet black sea fleet based fifty kilometers from global twelve summer residence throughout the coombe first rank captain simeonoff waited for an order to rescue call the shots but with the defense ministry part of the coup the rescue plan was ignored. or they'd like to first the pockets of resistance were to be suppressed second the president was to be found and taken under our protection third the remaining pockets of resistance were to be eliminated and we were to help evacuate the. president i see. the

upshot of it was that naval commanders only sent a telegram to cool it off urging him to hold on and that telegram was received by new. and employee of the four us post office hundreds of telegrams addressed to go bunch of were arriving from all over the soviet union k.g.b. men immediately seized all such mail. three days oldest eighteenth nineteenth and twentieth with the most disturbing days in my life we had no idea whether we would be allowed to go home and be arrested things were simply left around the course. was bracing for the worst case scenario people inside the white house expected an assault on the building with that possibility in mind they inspected all of the place when secret passages leading out into nearby courtyards. some of the regular reports coming in here claimed that

an assault on the building of the supreme soviet would begin in an hour's time but why would they need an assault or the building is like an aquarium all you need to do is just answer it and that's all there is do it. really actually go. this old alder was in fact given to the k.g.b. so-called alpha unit the men were already on high alert but for the first time in the unit's history they demanded an open debate and a vote on the order before launching operation but it's over with with. the commander asked everybody to voice their opinion on the operation and whether an assault was necessary at all. with or yes yes. most of the men with a service record of more than five years said no to the operation. the operation was called off but casualties were still unavoidable in the early hours of august the twenty first ninety ninety one the crews of several armored vehicles ordered to

move to another location city white house defenders attempted to stop them because they thought the vehicles were heading towards the parliament building to attack it three young men died as a result. you both come over spent the night waiting for the sun shortly before the oldest events he had served as a soldier in afghanistan he went to the white house after hearing an appeal from vice president alexander and called on people to go and defend democracy are going elsewhere for when my son had to squeeze appeal he went to the barricades because that's was a call from someone who served in afghanistan to printed but a day before. i asked him if he was going to the barricades and he said no that he hadn't seen the fighting in afghanistan. he had no business small in kenya rounded barricades but in tuesday's it was a different story. on wednesday i learned that he was no more. after that

tragedy it became obvious the coup had failed thanks began leaving moscow i want to address the twenty first a card carrying russia's vice president would score over token for convoys he was rushing to the airport to bring mikhail gorbachev back to moscow it was a total mess of homeland and to me it. was work when the pulled up and none of the ground controllers guided our flight not even during the landing regardless it was a trouble free flight when we touched down the airdrome superintendent drove up to the plane i introduced myself and said i needed a car and the bus to take us to gorbachev no problem. he said go right ahead. good scores plane was cool because on board touchstone must go on august twenty second one thousand nine hundred one a coup had failed the soviet president and in effect returned to

a different country should change during those three days in august i defended the soviet union to the laws of bullets that's what i did but failed. the finale of the stand off central moscow ammonium. to felix rohatyn ski the founder of soviet secret police standing in front of k.g.b. headquarters and looked young for a square is pulled down it was a symbol of the beginning of the people. the bright future which the communists had been talking about for seventy years finally became a possibility we could build it with our own hands we were used to the fact that the state was on the evidence that it could break and destroy anyone but this time nothing happened people had risen like a wall we said no enough white. approximately the same time a prosecutor general's office launches an investigation into the role of the coup organizers the plotters tried to pass the blame on to crimean frontier guards.

initially the team of investigators of the prosecutor general's office displayed florence then they began dropping hints or urging us to repent and take the whole blame for gorbachev's isolation otherwise we would face charges of high treason. as military men we became very bitter when we heard the word treason. however the frontier guards were later acquitted only those who gave the orders were arrested the driving forces of the coup led by general to unite a year later they were released from prison under an amnesty you know i have died in two thousand and ten this is an excerpt from one of his last interviews we will nor. any misguided decisions were made during those three days in august one thousand nine hundred one not the boom of tanks should not have been brought in and demonstrated or should not have been used for

a few months where we all that could have been done in a different way. when people today are asked whether they want a revival of the soviet union only nine percent say yes there is no chance of the state being revived in the form of the soviet union. mikhail gorbachev has never returned to his summer residence since august ninety ninety one now it's the property of the ukrainian state however top officials rarely vacation . and. the former k.g.b. colonel tolstoy makes no secret of the fact that even now he has no right to talk about some aspects of what happened then. crimean residents still harbors many secrets relating to those three days in one nine hundred ninety one only when new information has been declassified will it be able to shed light on. a figure of to be frank this place is not considered to be

a very lucky at all that we're back here why yeah. this is the officer on duty august twenty second one thousand nine hundred point five am boris yeltsin declares there reactionary coup has failed and thanks to defenders of the white house twelve pm for the first sign the three colored flag is raised over the supreme council of russia. held said yeltsin. good. only five months or left before the collapse of the soviet union.

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