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February 25, 2020 The last Marshal of the Soviet Union, Dmitry Yazov, who participated in the failed coup attempt against Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1991, died in Moscow today at the age of 95 "after a serious and long illness": the Russian Defense Ministry reported in a note taken up by the agencies.

One of the 11 leaders of the failed coup, the Soviet Interior Minister Boris Pugo, killed himself immediately after the attempted coup failed which in fact accelerated the collapse of the USSR. The other ten were amnestied by the Russian Duma on 23 February 1994.

Yazov, Soviet Defense Minister from 1987 to 1991, was sentenced in absentia to ten years in prison for "war crimes and crimes against humanity" last year by a Vilnius court for the events of 13 January 1991, when Soviet troops stormed the Vilnius television tower after Lithuania declared independence from Moscow in March 1990. The raid killed 14 civilians.

With Yazov's death, only one of the leaders of the failed 1991 coup remains alive, Oleg Baklanov, then vice president of the Defense Council.