Vladimir Danchev (Russian: Владимир Данчев, born 1948) is a former Russian newscaster at the foreign broadcasting service of Soviet radio in Moscow, who changed the English texts he was given to read in 1983, to express support for the Afghan people in their resistance to Soviet armed forces in their country.
[1][2] His activities, which began in February 1983, were not covered until the BBC and other Western media reported his actions in May that year.
[3] Of mixed Russian-Bulgarian descent, Danchev refused to repent his actions and was subsequently sent to a psychiatric hospital in Tashkent,[4] the city where he had grown up.
[5] He was released from the hospital that autumn, according to his employers at Radio Moscow, and returned to work in December 1983 by which time all broadcasts were pre-recorded.
It was defending the Afghan people against "terrorists funded by foreign sources": this was how the USSR referred to the Mujahedin and their backers in the CIA and Saudi Arabia.