This time, Russians seemed largely disengaged. For these Russians, it was their life, their country. For us, it was a major news event, a geopolitical turning point. The local staff was more tense than anyone. The world could see on CNN, in real time, what was unfolding in Russia in real time. We worked around the clock, as we always did with major breaking news. Our CNN Moscow bureau was teeming with action. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets, building barricades and defying the tanks. The coup plotters imposed a curfew, but the people ignored it.
Long day covering a coup in Moscow on 1991, with and the legendary reporters Dick Blystone and Tom Mintier, with photographer Phil Turner. In 1991, I was in Moscow with Wolf Blitzer and a team of legendary, brave and brilliant CNN journalists when the KGB, working with the defense minister and other top Soviet officials, tried to depose Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, who was attempting to reform the Soviet Union in a futile effort to prevent its collapse. The coup leaders imprisoned Gorbachev in his vacation home in Crimea.
Rapid deployment to Russia became almost routine.
Several times when I was on staff at CNN, I was awakened by a phone call instructing me to head to Moscow that same day because a coup was underway. Over my many years in the news business, I have witnessed multiple coups, attempted coups and insurrections. Where were the crowds of Putin supporters? Isn’t Putin the president with consistently stratospheric approval ratings? In a brief, angry speech to the nation on Monday night, Putin claimed the mutiny ended because “the entire Russian society united and rallied everyone.” Pointing to “ civil solidarity,” he insisted that the “ armed rebellion would have been suppressed anyway.” But those comments do not jibe with what the entire world witnessed. There’s a reason the most common official statements across the globe were along the lines of “We are monitoring events.” And yet, beneath the thick fog of rebellion, a few things were starkly visible.
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