Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped

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On August 19, 1991, CNN was providing nonstop live coverage of an attempted coup against Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev. Allied with the KGB, hardliners from inside the disintegrating Communist regime had sequestered Gorbachev at his dacha in Crimea and declared a state of emergency. The global press was full of experts and politicians worried that the coup would mark the sudden end of perestroika, or even the start of a civil war, as tanks rolled into the middle of Moscow.

I appeared as a guest on Larry King that evening, along with former US ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick, a professor from California, and a former KGB operative. I was alone in declaring that the coup had no chance of success, and that it would be over in forty-eight hours, not the months Kirkpatrick and many others were predicting. The coup’s leaders had no popular support, I insisted, and their attempt to put a halt to reforms they feared might lead to the breakup of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was doomed. The ruling bureaucracy was also split, with many feeling they had better opportunities for advancement after a Soviet breakup. I was vindicated with great efficiency, as Russian president Boris Yeltsin famously climbed aboard a tank, the people of Moscow rallied for freedom and democracy, and the cabal of coup leaders realized the people were against them. They surrendered two days later.

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