Moscow, December 25, 1991

All the operational maps are out of date. Moscow has lost Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, with their strategic Baltic Sea ports; Moldova, Belarus, and Ukraine in the heart of Europe; the Caucasian states of Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan; and the once loyal “stans,” Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

The new governments are busy seizing Soviet military assets. There is confusion everywhere. Ships and aircraft are being hurriedly relocated by Russian commanders to prevent them being requisitioned by other republics. On Shaposhnikov’s advice Yeltsin this morning ordered the pride of the Soviet fleet, the enormous and sophisticated new aircraft carrier the Admiral Kuznetsov, still undergoing trials, to set sail from the Crimean port of Sevastopol and relocate to Murmansk in northern Russia to prevent it from being seized by the new Ukrainian authorities.

Ukraine’s position on the Soviet military units on its territory was conveyed to Moscow that day in the form of an interview given by Leonid Kravchuk to Izvestia. The Ukrainian president reassures Russia that he does not object to Yeltsin being supreme commander in chief of the strategic forces on his territory, but with the mandatory condition that strategic missiles and tactical nuclear weapons be removed from operational status. “That is, we will have nuclear weapons, but it will be impossible to launch them. In that case the world will know that Ukraine is not responsible for any misfortune, God forbid.”

With respect to conventional forces, Kravchuk promises that Russian officers will not be expelled, and they will not invite Ukrainian officers serving in the Soviet Army elsewhere to come and serve in Ukraine. “If we went ahead with that, we would have to provide for their return and, consequently, expel people who are living here now. That would involve a great resettlement of peoples and would lead to confrontation…. The quick return of Ukrainians to Ukraine would be unrealistic and would create turmoil in the minds of the 11.5 million Russians living there.”

As for Gorbachev’s recent and frequent complaints that Russians are now finding themselves in foreign countries, Kravchuk comments bitterly that there are many Ukrainians living in Russia, but there is not a single Ukrainian school nor a single newspaper in Ukrainian in Russia, whereas half of all Ukrainian children are taught in Russian-speaking schools in Ukraine.

Shaposhnikov leaves the Kremlin as midnight approaches, relieved at the way things have turned out. Ambassadors and correspondents had been plaguing him with questions about who had political control over the nuclear weapons. As he walks to his limousine, a Russian journalist calls out, “In whose hands is the nuclear button?” “In safe hands,” he replies, with a smile.

In the Penta Hotel across town, CNN executives celebrate their journalistic coup late into the night. The Americans are cock-a-hoop. For the highly combative Johnson, it is “an incredible moment in the lives of all of us.” In the early hours Stu Loory leaves for the Rossiya, the monstrous concrete hotel adjacent to Red Square, where there is a studio with satellite uplink to Los Angeles, so he can appear on CNN’s Larry King Live. He holds up the Mont Blanc pen for American viewers to see as he tells the story of how it was used to liquidate the Soviet Union. Next morning at breakfast Johnson asks for it back. Loory takes the pen out of his pocket and hands it over. “You only think it’s yours!” he says with a straight face.¹²

The CNN celebrations are interrupted by a call to CNN manager Frida Ghitis from Georgia, where civil war is in full swing.¹³ President Zviad Gamsakhurdia is under attack from armed opposition forces in Tbilisi. Christiane Amanpour and Siobhan Darrow and camerawoman Jane Evans have braved gunfire to get to Gamsakhurdia’s dugout in the parliament and have interviewed him under fire.

“It was a crackling call over a satellite phone telling us the interview with the Georgian leader in his bunker was ready,” said Ghitis. “All we had to do now was get the tape back to Moscow so we could show it to the world.”