Gennady Yanayev, the Russian politician who led the abortive 1991 coup against then Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, died yesterday following an illness. He was 73."Yanayev died after a long and painful illness. He was admitted the night before to a Moscow hospital," a source at the hospital was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying.
Yanayev died of lung cancer, television reports said.
The coup plotters, or "putschists", shook the country when they declared a state of emergency on August 19 while Gorbachev was on vacation in Crimea, Ukraine.
Tanks rolled through Moscow towards the White House, where Boris Yeltsin, leader of the Soviet-era Russian republic at the time, gathered his supporters after denouncing the coup from the roof of a tank.
Boris' finest hour. Just about his only fine hour, in fact...
In a sign that old wounds have yet to heal, a spokesman for Gorbachev had little to say on Yanayev's death.
"He is a person who betrayed," spokesman Vladimir Polyakov told AFP.
Others were more gracious.