Vadim Bakatin last acting KGB chairman dies in Moscow, Russia

Vadim Bakatin, last acting KGB chairman and a well-known Soviet and Russian political and social activist, died in Moscow, Russia, aged 85, on Sunday, July 31.

Vadim Bakatin, the last acting KGB chairman, under whom the once all-powerful Russian agency was reformed, after which the KGB was divided into several independent security agencies, has died.

The infamous KGB was the main security agency for the Soviet Union from March 13 1954 until December 3, 1991.

Born on November 6, 1937, in Kiselevsk, now Kemerovo Region, Russia Vadim Bakatin the last KGB chairman, began his career in Kuzbass.

There, he worked in Kemerovo construction management and “Kemerokhimstroi”, was the Secretary of the Kemerovo City Committee and Kemerovo Regional Committee of the CPSU.

In 1983, Vadim Bakatin fell into the field of view of the future Politburo member Yegor Ligachev, who was head of the Party Organisation Department of the CPSU Central Committee, after which Bakatin’s career began to take off.

He was later appointed to dismantle the KGB, but he was unable to control this organisation and ultimately he was unable to fulfil the complex task due to political reasons.

Despite this he managed the KGB’s disintegration into separate organisations and later ran for the Russian presidency as an independent candidate in June 1991.

Vadim Bakatin will be buried in Moscow at Troekurovsky cemetery, according to reports by RG.

The news comes follows the reported death of Oleksiy Vadatursky, a grain tycoon ranked by Forbes as Ukraine’s 24th-richest man, along with his wife, in a Russian missile strike on the city of Mykolaiv.