List of KGB defectors

This is a list of Soviet secret police officers and agents who have defected.

Name	Defection date	Country of defection	Comment
Georgiy Sergeyevich Agabekov[1]	1930	France	Disappeared around August 1937. Body never recovered
Ignace Reiss	July 1937	Switzerland	Gunned down by an NKVD hit squad on 4 September 1938
Walter Germanovich Krivitskiy[1]	October 1937	France	Found dead in his hotel room on 10 February 1941 with a gunshot wound to the temple. Suspected foul play
Genrikh Samoilovich Lyushkov	1938	Japan	Executed by Japan in 1945 to prevent his recapture by the Soviets
Aleksandr Mikhailovich Orlov[1]	1938	Canada	Authenticity of defection disputed[2]
Lev Borisovich Helfand[1]	1940	Italy
Igor Grigoryevich Orlov	1943	Germany	Re-recruited as Soviet agent in 1949
Viktor Andreyevich Kravchenko[1][2]	1944	United States	Not an intelligence officer
Anatoliy Mikhailovich Granovskiy	1946	Sweden
Petr Sergeyevich Deryabin[1][2]	1953	Austria
Nikolay Yevgenyevich Khokhlov	1954	West Germany	Victim of thallium poisoning in 1957. Survived[3]
Yuriy Aleksandrovich Rastvorov[1]	1954	Japan
Vladimir Mikhaylovich Petrov[1][2]	3 April 1954	Australia	Led to the Petrov Affair in Australia[4]
Yevdokiya Alekseyevna Petrova	19 April 1954	Australia	Led to the Petrov Affair in Australia[4]
Reino Häyhänen	1957	France	Died in an automobile accident in 1961. Accident considered suspicious[5]
Anatoliy Mikhailovich Golitsyn[2]	15 December 1961	Finland
Bohdan Mykolayovych Stashynsky	1961	West Berlin
Yuri Vasilevich Krotkov	1963	United Kingdom	KGB agent, not an officer
Yuriy Ivanovich Nosenko[6]	January 1964	Switzerland	Authenticity of defection disputed[2]
Yuriy Aleksandrovich Bezmenov[7]	1970	Canada	Intelligence agent, not an officer
Sergey Nikolayevich Kourdakov	4 September 1971	Canada	Intelligence agent, not an officer
Oleg Adolfovich Lyalin[2]	1971	United Kingdom
Imants Lešinskis[8]	1978[9]	United States
Aleksei Alekseyevich Myagkov[2]	1974	West Berlin
Stanislav Aleksandrovich Levchenko[2]	1979, October	Japan
Oleg Agraniants[10]	1986	Tunisia
Ilya Grigoryevich Dzhirkvelov[2]	1980	Switzerland
Viktor Ivanovich Sheymov[11]	1980	United States
Vladimir Anatolyevich Kuzichkin	1982	Iran
Oleg Antonovich Gordievsky	19 July 1985	United Kingdom	Suspected poisoning in 2007. Survived[12]
Vitaly Sergeyevich Yurchenko	1985	Italy	Disputed (later returned to USSR)[2]
Igor Nikolayevich Cherpinskiy[13]	1990	Belgium
Sergey Sergeyevich Illarionov[14]	1992	Italy
Vasiliy Nikitich Mitrokhin	1992	Latvia
Viktor Alekseyevich Oshchenko[15]	July 1992	United Kingdom
Aleksandr Nikolayevich Poteyev	26 June 2010	United States	KGB colonel, later SVR officer. Multiple assassination attempts[16][17][18]

Aleksei Myagkov in 1977

See also

• List of Cold War pilot defections
• List of GRU defectors
• List of Soviet and Eastern Bloc defectors
• Petrov Affair