New information about the Kennedy assassination: Russia handed over important materials to the United States

On Wednesday, October 15, it became known that Russian Ambassador to the United States Alexander Darchiev handed over to Republican Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna documents about the assassination of 35th President John F. Kennedy in 1963. This happened as part of an additional investigation, which the current president of the country, Donald Trump, promised to the voters. For more information about Russian documents, the investigation of the Kennedy assassination, as well as declassified documents, see the Izvestia article.

Russia's archive data on the assassination of John F. Kennedy: what is known, transfer

On October 15, it became known that the Russian Ambassador to the United States, Alexander Darchiev, received Anna Paulina Luna at his residence in Washington the day before. During the meeting, he handed her the Rosarchive materials based on declassified Soviet documents about the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy. Darchiev also expressed hope that the archival data collected by the editorial board of the collection "The Kennedy Assassination and Soviet-American Relations" will shed more light on the tragedy that occurred on November 22, 1963 in the United States. This was reported in the Telegram channel of the Russian Embassy in the United States.

Congresswoman Luna thanked the Russian Embassy for documents about the Kennedy assassination

The documents were handed over at the request of the congresswoman as part of the investigation into the Kennedy assassination, which was previously promised to voters by the current head of the White House, as well as "with the consent of the copyright holder, materials planned to be published by the Federal Archival Agency (Rosarchiv) based on declassified Soviet documents, some of which were previously received by the American side from the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (Anastasom — Izvestia) Mikoyan."

The embassy's page also added that the official publication of the documents in Russia is expected in November.

Anna Paulina Luna said that on Wednesday morning, October 15, the translation and study of the submitted documents will begin.

"A group of experts will arrive at my office in the morning to begin translating and fully examining the documents. We will upload them as soon as we can," she wrote on the social network X.

The congresswoman thanked the Russian Embassy for the submitted documents, and also noted that "this is of great historical importance."

Declassification of documents on the Kennedy assassination in March 2025: what is known

In March 2025, the American authorities declassified more than 63 thousand pages of secret documents about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. They had not been shown before for fear that it would harm national security. After the assassination of the 35th President of the United States, interest in the tragedy did not fade for many years. In this regard, in 1992, the country's Congress passed a law according to which all documents related to the assassination attempt had to be declassified and published within 25 years. However, there was a caveat — the US president can cancel the publication of documents if he considers that this will harm the country's defense, national security, or international relations.

The total database of the assassination consisted of about 6 million pages, photographs and other materials. 99% was declassified before 1998.

Shortly after taking office for the second time, Donald Trump issued a decree on the publication of all documents about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert Kennedy and preacher and public figure Martin Luther King.

Immediately after the publication of the documents, historians began studying them, who concluded that the materials would not have a global impact on the story of the assassination of the 35th president. Basically, they shed light on a number of other issues on which those interested had no agreement before.

The Russian Ambassador handed over declassified materials about the Kennedy assassination to Congresswoman Luna

Why weren't the Kennedy assassination files declassified?

In 2022, it was reported that the FBI and the CIA insisted on maintaining the secret status of the documents due to the fact that they contained the names and personal data of still living people who were intelligence and law enforcement informants in the 1960s and 1970s. The FBI and the CIA assumed that after the release of the data, these individuals could become victims of intimidation and violence. In addition, these documents contain the location of the CIA's residences and safe houses abroad, which were used after Kennedy's death.

It may take years to study all the materials published in March 2025, but historians and others interested in the investigation have obtained data that was not previously published precisely because they could somehow affect the interests of American intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA. The documents pointed to the agency's growing influence and its desire to influence foreign policy. In addition, there was a description of how the CIA tapped phones in Mexico City to intercept conversations between Soviet and Cuban diplomats. This document turned out to be in the files related to the Kennedy assassination due to the fact that Lee Harvey Oswald visited the USSR and Cuba shortly before Kennedy's assassination.

According to another publication, in those years, the CIA had a group of agents involved in the international arms trade, including the "armed resistance" in the USSR. According to a 1967 article, Agent Gary Underhill told acquaintances that the CIA might be involved in the Kennedy assassination and that he feared for his life. He claimed that intelligence officers were involved in arms, drug trafficking and smuggling, and the president found out about these schemes. Six months later, Underhill was found dead in his apartment. His death was officially ruled a suicide. Later, an investigation in the United States confirmed that some of the CIA employees were indeed involved in the purchase of weapons, but information about the transactions, according to the official version, was passed on to the FBI and other agencies.

There is also information among the data indicating the perpetrators and possible organizers of the assassination attempt. One of the key figures is the head of the CIA's counterintelligence department, James Angleton, whom various sources called the main coordinator of the Kennedy assassination.

The connection to the "Israeli" trail was also indicated. After the declassification of the data, people's publications began to appear on the Internet, indicating the alleged participation of Israeli intelligence in the assassination attempt, referring to those documents in the previous edition of which Israel was not mentioned. One version was that Kennedy demanded that the Jewish state's nuclear program be stopped and that American inspectors be allowed to visit nuclear facilities. In this case, Angleton acted as a double agent for Mossad and transmitted critical information to Tel Aviv that contributed to Israel's development and production of nuclear weapons.

Why the Kennedy assassination still raises questions

The 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, was assassinated on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas. Lee Harvey Oswald, a former Marine who lived in the USSR for a while and then returned to the United States, was recognized as the killer. According to the official investigation (the Warren Commission), Oswald acted alone, but it was not possible to establish his motivation. Two days later, he was killed by Jack Ruby during his transfer to prison, which is why his trial did not take place.

The conclusions of the Warren Commission have been criticized more than once, especially the claim that Oswald acted alone or on his own initiative.

Lee Harvey Oswald, according to the official version, fired three shots, but many argue that the bullet that wounded Kennedy and Texas Governor John Connally, who was sitting in front, could not have followed such a trajectory. Proponents of alternative theories believe that there should have been at least two shooters.