As for JFK, I think the fact the Soviets were panicking around even asking their intelligence service 'this wasn't us right?' To which their response was 'we know the shooter, but too unstable to use so avoided him' makes me think the CIA knew he had brief contact and thought 2 birds, 1 stone as JFK was a thorn in their side.
Kruschev was probably shitting himself. I think the suspicion in the Kremlin was that it was the military that assassinated him, and was going to install Le May into power to start a war. To be honest, considering that nearly happened to Kruschev more than once, it's not an unreasonable suspicion. The fact that Oswold fucking worked for the KGB, and lived in Moscow for a time, means that if the US wanted to, they absolutely could have started WW3 with that information. There'd be no way to convince the US public that the Soviets weren't the perpetrators if the government came out and said: "a communist political activist, defector to the Soviet Union, and former KGB informant assassinated JFK."
It was only a few years since the Cuban Missile Crisis, and his own military basically tried to start WW3 with Castro, without even warning him. Castro actually stated that his goal was to start WW3, and the militarists in Moscow were all about it. Kruschev nearly lost all control. He probably thought the same thing was happening in DC. He knew the military had been gunning for war basically since 1947, and he knew that the military assumed that the best way to prevent a large-scale nuclear exchange was to go pre-emptive. The military didn't know what Kruschev knew: that there was basically no chance of the USSR coming out the winner in a nuclear exchange because the US had basically more of everything, and the USSR was hiding it's nuclear weakness, going all the way back to the "Bomber Gap" days.
Kruschev was probably shitting himself. I think the suspicion in the Kremlin was that it was the military that assassinated him, and was going to install Le May into power to start a war. To be honest, considering that nearly happened to Kruschev more than once, it's not an unreasonable suspicion. The fact that Oswold fucking worked for the KGB, and lived in Moscow for a time, means that if the US wanted to, they absolutely could have started WW3 with that information. There'd be no way to convince the US public that the Soviets weren't the perpetrators if the government came out and said: "a communist political activist, defector to the Soviet Union, and former KGB informant assassinated JFK."
It was only a few years since the Cuban Missile Crisis, and his own military basically tried to start WW3 with Castro, without even warning him. Castro actually stated that his goal was to start WW3, and the militarists in Moscow were all about it. Kruschev nearly lost all control. He probably thought the same thing was happening in DC. He knew the military had been gunning for war basically since 1947, and he knew that the military assumed that the best way to prevent a large-scale nuclear exchange was to go pre-emptive. The military didn't know what Kruschev knew: that there was basically no chance of the USSR coming out the winner in a nuclear exchange because the US had basically more of everything, and the USSR was hiding it's nuclear weakness, going all the way back to the "Bomber Gap" days.