Karl Ohs, 61, the former lieutenant governor of Montana, died Sunday morning at his home in Helena. He had been fighting brain cancer after being diagnosed in March, his family said. Ohs, of Harrison, was lieutenant governor from 2000 to 2004. He served in the Legislature and was recognized for his actions to end the 1996 Freeman standoff in Jordan.
Funeral arrangements and services are pending.
Vladimir Kryuchkov, 83, the former KGB chief who spearheaded a failed coup against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, died Friday in Moscow of an unspecified illness, according to the Federal Security Service, the main KGB successor agency.
Kryuchkov owed his swift career rise to Soviet leader Yuri Andropov. He worked alongside Andropov when he served as the Soviet ambassador to Hungary and oversaw a brutal suppression of anti-communist uprising in Budapest in 1956.
When Andropov became KGB chief in 1967, he took Kryuchkov along and helped him rise through the ranks. In 1974, Kryuchkov was named chief of the KGB’s First Main Directorate in charge of spying abroad.
In 1988, Gorbachev appointed Kryuchkov as KGB chief.
In August 1991, Kryuchkov joined other hard-line members of the Communist Party leadership who ousted Gorbachev and declared a nationwide state of emergency in an attempt to roll back liberal reforms.
The coup collapsed after three days and helped precipitate the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991. Kryuch kov and other coup plotters were jailed but freed on an amnesty.
After Vladimir Putin, a 16-year KGB veteran, was elected president in 2000, Kryuchkov gave numerous interviews praising Putin and accusing the West of plots to weaken Russia. He also published his memoirs.
