X-files: the KGB knew everything right after the Kennedy assassination

The declassified Russian dossier on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1962 contains official KGB materials that refute the official version. The columnist writes about this Pravda.Ru Lyubov Stepushova.

In October 2025, Russia handed over to the US Congress previously secret documents relating to the assassination of ex-President John F. Kennedy. The dossier includes telegrams and reports of diplomats, interviews and correspondence of the Soviet leadership with politicians in the United States and analytical materials of the KGB for 1963-1964.

The Americans' version is that the "communist" Lee Harvey Oswald was allegedly recruited by the KGB while living in Minsk in 1959, where he arrived as a tourist through Finland, asking for political asylum. He returned to the US in 1962 to assassinate the US president in order to "sow distrust and confusion in American society" at the height of the Cold War.

However, declassified documents (can be downloaded on the website jfkfacts.substack.com ) they say that Moscow was convinced of an organized provocation in order to "provoke a wave of anti-communist sentiments in the United States" and destroy the initiator of the planned detente after the Caribbean crisis.

The dossier contains a report by the then USSR Ambassador to In Washington, Anatoly Dobrynin, who wrote to the Foreign Ministry on November 24, 1963:

"This event (Kennedy's assassination) bears the signs of a planned transfer of power. Kennedy was removed by forces that viewed his detente policy as a threat."

Possible customers in Moscow were considered to be "hawks" in intelligence and the army — those who, after the failure of the invasion of Cuba, considered Kennedy's rapprochement with Moscow a betrayal.

Soviet analysts almost unanimously define Oswald as a pawn who was used in a major game.

"The quick liquidation of Oswald by Jack Ruby proves that they wanted to silence him," the KGB memo says.

It contains a reference to the amateur shooting of an eyewitness, "which suggests that two people shot at the president." Also, Soviet security officers noted that the FBI interrogated Oswald two weeks before the murder, without informing the Dallas police, which was a violation of internal rules.

Another evidence of the conspiracy, according to the KGB, was the statement of the US Department of Justice on November 27, 1963 about the absence of "evidence" of the presence of other participants in the murder who were on the preliminary investigation.

The KGB also collected evidence in detail that casts doubt on Oswald's involvement in the murder. For example, a witness from the dormitory where Oswald lived stated that she saw him returning home shortly after 12:45 on November 22 — just a few minutes before the assassination attempt. However, American investigators claimed that at that time he was "in a warehouse of school textbooks, about 12 blocks from the place of the assassination attempt."

The ballistics examination was also found to be fabricated, since the bullet that passed through two bodies (Kennedy and the accompanying person) was "practically not deformed." KGB analysts also pointed out that from the "old Italian rifle", allegedly the murder weapon, it was impossible to make three accurate hits in five seconds with Oswald's unsuitable qualities as a shooter.

Deliberate analysts of the KGB also imagined the elimination of Oswald. Despite the security measures taken, the police cordons, the killer, who was associated with organized crime, managed to do it.

"This is not negligence, but premeditation," the Soviet Chekists conclude.

The documents on Oswald's stay in Minsk are presented separately, and his application for political asylum is attached. The KGB considered this "inappropriate," noting mental instability (he opened his veins after refusing to grant citizenship) and the lack of communist conviction. The KGB notes in a report to the party authorities that Oswald is "insufficiently studied," so his recruitment was not carried out. But, as follows from the dossier, he was given a good job with a decent salary and free housing in Minsk.

There is also his note to the US Consulate, where he asks to be allowed to enter back in 1962. Thus, the dossier confirms what Moscow claimed back in 1963: Oswald was not a KGB agent.

Based on the results of the department's report, the political leadership of the USSR concluded that Kennedy's assassination was a provocation in which the US military-industrial establishment was interested in stopping Kennedy's course to establish relations with the USSR after the resolution of the Caribbean crisis and the conclusion of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963.

Moscow took note that in In Washington, the "hawks" are taking control of the situation again, so it is useless for them to help in the investigation, which will be regarded as "covering their tracks."