00:01Two decades on, this image of Boris Yeltsin remains the reference point for many,
00:08remembering the failed coup against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
00:13Yeltsin, the then president of Russia, led public resistance to the attempted takeover.
00:19Thousands protested against the coup announced 20 years ago today
00:23by leading hardline communists opposed to Gorbachev's reforms.
00:29With Gorbachev under house arrest at his Black Sea villa, armoured vehicles were sent into Moscow.
00:37Yet amid public opposition, the putsch collapsed two days later.
00:42Gorbachev flew back to the capital, looking badly shaken by the experience.
00:47Many historians say the coup achieved the opposite of what the plotters intended
00:51and simply hastened the demise of the Soviet Union just months later.
00:58but now they are going to be in the state of Russia.
00:58So before we started it,
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