USSR had no hand in JFK killing – archive chief

Kennedy’s murder has sparked speculation and conspiracy theories for decades.

Archival documents prove that the Soviet Union was not involved in the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy, the head of Russia’s Federal Archival Agency (Rosarkhiv), Andrey Artizov, said in an interview with RIA Novosti on Thursday.

Last October, at the request of US Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna, the Russian Embassy handed over copies of declassified Soviet-era documents compiled by Russia’s state archives related to Kennedy’s shooting death on November 22, 1963. The Embassy said that many of the files had already been shared with US officials by Soviet authorities during Kennedy’s funeral in 1963.

According to Artizov, Russia’s main objective was to put to rest questions about the Soviet Union’s possible role.

“The Soviet leadership had nothing to do with the assassination or with all those theories of a communist conspiracy, and the documents show this,” he said, adding that the materials include documents published for the first time on Lee Harvey Oswald’s stay in the Soviet Union.

Oswald, who was charged with Kennedy’s murder, was shot dead two days after his arrest. The official US investigation concluded that he acted alone, though Kennedy’s death has continued to fuel speculation and conspiracy theories for decades.

Oswald lived in the Soviet Union from 1959 to 1960, where he worked as a lathe operator at a factory in Minsk, then part of the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic. He married a Russian woman, who later moved with him to the United States.

US intelligence agencies monitored Oswald in 1963 after he allegedly visited Mexico City in late September of that year and sought visas from the Cuban Consulate and the Soviet Embassy, which were under routine surveillance. Soviet security services also kept files on Oswald during his time in the USSR.

Luna, a Republican from Florida, has pushed for a renewed US examination of the assassination and has called for the full release of documents related to the case. She has publicly questioned whether Oswald was solely responsible.

US President Donald Trump released 2,800 documents on the Kennedy assassination in 2017 and an additional 80,000 pages related to the case in March 2025, though some material remains classified.