Tanks in the Soviet Union on Tajbeg Palace began; as planned, president Hafizullah Amin was killed. The Soviet military command at Termez, Uzbek SSR, announced on Radio Kabul that Afghanistan had been liberated from Amin's rule. According to the Soviet Politburo they were complying with the 1978 "Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Good Neighborliness" and Amin had been "executed by a tribunal for his crimes" by the Afghan Revolutionary Central Committee. That committee then elected as head of government former Deputy Prime Minister Babrak Karmal, and said that it had requested Soviet military assistance. Soviet ground forces, under the command of Marshal Sergei Sokolov, entered
Babrak Karmal Chairmanship of the Presidium of the Revolutionary Council, some time before Karmal received an official appointment. Karmal returned to Kabul on 28 December. He travelled alongside a Soviet military column. For the next few days Karmal lived in a villa on the outskirts of Kabul under the protection of the KGB. On 1 January 1980 Leonid Brezhnev, the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and Alexei Kosygin, the Soviet Chairman of the Council of Ministers, congratulated Karmal on his "election" as leader. When he came to power, Karmal promised an end to