Attempted coup d'etat in the USSR in 1991

USSR. Moscow. A burning infantry fighting vehicle at the site of a clash between protesting supporters of USSR President Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev and a column of armored vehicles of the Taman Division, which was carrying out the orders of the State Emergency Committee, at the Tchaikovsky Tunnel on the Garden Ring during an attempt by members of the State Emergency Committee in the USSR to carry out a coup in the country. In order to prevent the signing of the Union Treaty, which was supposed to replace the USSR with a new federation of sovereign states, representatives of the highest Soviet leadership, headed by USSR Vice President Gennady Ivanovich Yanayev, removed the president of the USSR from power and created the State Emergency Committee (SEC). Andrei Solovyov/TASS