"Only the Republican Guard and his special forces remain loyal, guarding the palace and residence," he told France-Info.
Loyal guards had rigged up an antenna enabling him to hear foreign news, Mr Gorbachev explained: "the BBC sounded the best".Two decades and a geopolitical age later, the BBC World Service revealed on January 26th that its Russian-language radio broadcasts are among several services that will be stopped because of a big budget squeeze.
They are confronting an entrenched political class that is protected by a hard-core, fiercely loyal Republican Guard and by American-trained special operations units.
And he said they would be commanded by members of his loyal old guard, headed by a relative not by young officers untainted by allegations of corruption.For Mr Qurei, that was a snub too far.
Because they served the Yongle emperor as a loyal rear guard during his seizure of the throne, he rewarded them with virtual autonomy, withdrawing the Chinese command post from their homeland beyond the Great Wall.
He too is holed up in the presidential palace, not far from the Hôtel du Golf, protected by his loyal Republican Guard and 300 soldiers lent to him by Angola's president, José Eduardo dos Santos, one of Africa's long-serving "big men" still loyal to him.
But, holed up in the presidential palace in Abidjan, Laurent Gbagbo, the country's dictatorial president for the past ten years, has furiously rejected the AU's demand that he step down, continuing to cling ever more tenuously to power, surrounded by his loyal Republican Guard and youth militias.
His most memorable role was that of Woodcock, the resolutely loyal train guard in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), who refuses to let his train be robbed ("Mr Butch, you know if it were my money, there's nobody I'd rather have steal it than you") despite being blown up twice by the outlaws.
He controls the ministry of interior (which includes the feared Mabahith secret police), the National Guard (a huge and loyal Praetorian Guard that protects the ruling family and their interests), and - as defence minister - he controls the armed forces.
