The last marshal of the USSR Dmitry Yazov died

In Moscow, in the 96th year of his life, a Soviet statesman, Minister of Defense of the USSR, Marshal Dmitry Yazov, - said the Ministry of Defense of Russia.

Yazov was born in 1924. He joined the Red Army as a volunteer during the war in 1941. He participated in the defense of Leningrad and the offensive in the Baltic. Since 1944 - member of the CPSU (b). He was wounded twice, awarded the Order of the Red Star for attacks in the forefront.

After the war, he graduated from improving infantry officers, studied at the Military Academy. He participated in the Caribbean crisis, his motorized rifle regiment was transferred to Cuba, where he was supposed to defend himself from the potential invasion of the United States. He headed Soviet troops, located in Czechoslovakia, the Central Asian and Far Eastern military districts.

In May 1987, after the resignation of Marshal Sergei Sokolov, who was removed from his post due to the flight of Matthias Rusta, who was landing in Moscow on the Vasilievsky descent, was appointed Minister of Defense of the USSR.

Yazov was the last person who was awarded the title of Marshal of the Soviet Union. He was the last Minister of Defense of the country to participate in the Second World War. In the late 1980s, the Soviet party leadership imposed liability for him for the use of troops in the Union republics, including in announcing the restoration of sovereignty Lithuania. There he was sentenced in absentia to 10 years in prison for war crimes.

In August 1991, he was a member of the State Emergency Committee. On his orders, military equipment was introduced to Moscow. Then he fell into folklore with the publicist attributed to Maxim Sokolov by the heading "Nightmare, on Yazov Street." According to , in particular, in the memoirs of Ruslan Khasbulatov, on August 21, after the death of people at the White House, it was JAZ to bring military equipment from Moscow, saying: "I brewed porridge, I have to disintegrate." He went to negotiations in Foros to Mikhail Gorbachev, where he was arrested. On television, his appeal to Gorbachev was broadcast, in which he repented in his participation in the State Emergency Committee and called himself an "old fool." Subsequently, in the memoirs, Yazov insisted that he did not consider the events of that time an attempt by a coup, and recorded the appeal under pressure.

In 1994, he was amnestied and dismissed from military service. In the last years of his life, he held various advisory positions in the Russian Ministry of Defense. He was awarded two higher Soviet awards - the orders of Lenin, in Russia several state awards were noted, the highest of which the Order for Merit to the Fatherland of the III degree, which he received in 2020.

The Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu presented the award. He led the commission on the organization of the funeral. It is reported that Jazov will be buried in the federal memorial military cemetery in Mytishchi.

Vladimir Putin in condolences in connection with the death of Marshal wrote that Yazov was "an outstanding military leader" and "a man of exceptional courage and power of the spirit."