The following is a list of defectors from the Commonwealth of Independent States. The Commonwealth is an intergovernmental organization formed after the dissolution of the Soviet Union as its legal successor. This list of defectors is not to be confused with Soviet defectors.
Defector | Profession/ Prominence | Birthplace | Year | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|
Kanatjan Alibekov | Bioweapons chief | Kazakhstan | 1992 | Former director of Biopreparat; defected to the United States |
Stanislav Lunev | GRU agent | Russia | 1992 | Defected to the U.S.; revealed the existence of KGB weapons caches in the West |
Vasili Mitrokhin | KGB agent | Russia | 1992 | KGB archivist who was shocked by records of Soviet political repression; defected in Riga, Latvia to the British embassy |
Sergei Tretyakov | SVR agent | Russia | 2000 | Defected in New York City to the CIA; Deputy Resident Station Chief in New York City; revealed many political and intelligence secrets from Russia; sudden death occurred in Sarasota County, Florida, on June 13, 2010; foul play has been alleged |
Alexander Litvinenko | FSB agent | Russia | 2000 | Exposed crimes ordered by Russian president Vladimir Putin; defected in London, United Kingdom; assassinated |
Denis Sharonov | Former agriculture minister of the Komi Republic | Russia | 2022 | Defected to the U.S. via Kyrgyzstan, the United Arab Emirates, and Mexico to avoid conscription in the Russian Army following the invasion of Ukraine, which he blamed on his falling out with officials of the regional government [1] |
Maksim Kuzminov | Pilot | Russia | 2023 | Attack pilot of the 319th Separate Helicopter Regiment of the Eastern Military District; [2] defected to Ukraine in a Mi-8AMTSh helicopter during the Russian invasion [3] |
The Republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or the Union Republics were national-based administrative units of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The Soviet Union was formed in 1922 by a treaty between the Soviet republics of Byelorussia, Russian SFSR (RSFSR), Transcaucasian Federation, and Ukraine, by which they became its constituent republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which borders it to the east and northeast. It also borders Belarus to the north; Poland and Slovakia to the west; Hungary, Romania and Moldova to the southwest; with a coastline along the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov to the south and southeast. Kyiv is the nation's capital and largest city, followed by Kharkiv, Dnipro, and Odesa. Ukraine's official language is Ukrainian.
The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) is a regional intergovernmental organization in Eurasia. It was formed following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, and is its legal successor. It covers an area of 20,368,759 km2 (7,864,422 sq mi) and has an estimated population of 239,796,010. The CIS encourages cooperation in economic, political, and military affairs and has certain powers relating to the coordination of trade, finance, lawmaking, and security, including cross-border crime prevention.
The Sukhoi Su-27 is a Soviet-origin twin-engine supersonic supermaneuverable fighter aircraft designed by Sukhoi. It was intended as a direct competitor for the large US fourth-generation jet fighters such as the Grumman F-14 Tomcat and McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle, with 3,530-kilometre (1,910 nmi) range, heavy aircraft ordnance, sophisticated avionics and high maneuverability. The Su-27 was designed for air superiority missions, and subsequent variants are able to perform almost all aerial warfare operations. It was designed with the Mikoyan MiG-29 as its complement.
The Mikoyan MiG-29 is a twin-engine fighter aircraft designed in the Soviet Union. Developed by the Mikoyan design bureau as an air superiority fighter during the 1970s, the MiG-29, along with the larger Sukhoi Su-27, was developed to counter U.S. fighters such as the McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle and the General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon. The MiG-29 entered service with the Soviet Air Forces in 1983.
The Mikoyan MiG-31 is a supersonic interceptor aircraft developed for the Soviet Air Forces by the Mikoyan design bureau as a replacement for the earlier MiG-25 "Foxbat"; the MiG-31 is based on and shares design elements with the MiG-25.
In politics, a defector is a person who gives up allegiance to one state in exchange for allegiance to another, changing sides in a way which is considered illegitimate by the first state. More broadly, defection involves abandoning a person, cause, or doctrine to which one is bound by some tie, as of allegiance or duty.
Viktor Ivanovich Belenko was a Russian-born American aerospace engineer and Soviet pilot who defected in 1976 to the West while flying his MiG-25 "Foxbat" jet interceptor and landed in Hakodate, Japan. George H. W. Bush, the Director of Central Intelligence at the time, called the opportunity to examine the plane up close an "intelligence bonanza" for the West. Belenko later became a U.S. aerospace engineer.
Valery Pavlovich Chkalov was a test pilot awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union (1936).
The Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation or FIS RF is Russia's external intelligence agency, focusing mainly on civilian affairs. The SVR RF succeeded the First Chief Directorate (PGU) of the KGB in December 1991. The SVR has its headquarters in the Yasenevo District of Moscow with its director reporting directly to the President of the Russian Federation.
The Ukrainian Air Force is the air force of Ukraine and one of the eight branches of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Its current form was created in 2004 by merging the Ukrainian Air Defence Forces into the Air Force.
Intermarium was a post-World War I geopolitical plan conceived by Józef Piłsudski to unite former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth lands within a single polity. The plan went through several iterations, some of which anticipated the inclusion of neighbouring states. The proposed multinational polity would have incorporated territories lying between the Baltic, Black, and Adriatic Seas, hence the name Intermarium.
The Russian Air Force is a branch of the Russian Aerospace Forces, the latter being formed on 1 August 2015 with the merging of the Russian Air Force and the Russian Aerospace Defence Forces. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the reborn Russian armed forces began to be created on 7 May 1992 following Boris Yeltsin's creation of the Ministry of Defence. However, the Russian Federation's air force can trace its lineage and traditions back to the Imperial Russian Air Service (1912–1917) and the Soviet Air Forces (1918–1991).
Western Ukraine or West Ukraine refers to the western territories of Ukraine. There is no universally accepted definition of the territory's boundaries, but the contemporary Ukrainian administrative regions (oblasts) of Chernivtsi, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv, Ternopil and Zakarpattia are typically included. In addition, Volyn and Rivne oblasts are also usually included. In modern sources, Khmelnytskyi Oblast is often included because of its geographical, linguistic and cultural association with Western Ukraine, although this can not be confirmed from a historical and political point of view. It includes several historical regions such as Carpathian Ruthenia, Halychyna including Pokuttia, most of Volhynia, northern Bukovina and the Hertsa region, and Podolia. Western Ukraine is sometimes considered to include areas of eastern Volhynia, Podolia, and the small northern portion of Bessarabia.
Boris Georgiyevich Bazhanov was a secretary of the Secretariat of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union who published memoirs about Stalin and his secrets.
Vasyl Omelianovych Makukh was a Soviet veteran of World War II, political prisoner and Ukrainian activist, and member of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. Having been conscripted into the Red Army, in November 1944 Makukh defected and joined the nationalist Ukrainian Insurgent Army. In February 1946 he was wounded and captured after a shootout with Soviet and Polish border guards at the Soviet-Polish border. On 15 February 1946, Makukh was taken to the district precinct of the KGB in Velyki Mosty and later to Lviv Prison No. 4. On 11 July 1946, the Military Tribunal of Lviv garrison sentenced him to 10 years of hard labour (katorga) with five years of detention plus the confiscation of all his property. Makukh served his sentence in Dubravlag (Mordovia) and other GULAG camps in Siberia. On 18 July 1955, he was freed and exiled to a local settlement, where he met a woman who had also served 10 years imprisonment. In 1956, both managed to return to Ukraine, and being forbidden to return to their own region, they settled in Dnipropetrovsk, where they married and Makukh worked as a schoolteacher.
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was formally dissolved as a sovereign state and subject of international law on 26 December 1991 by Declaration № 142-Н of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. It also brought an end to the Soviet Union's federal government and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev's effort to reform the Soviet political and economic system in an attempt to stop a period of political stalemate and economic backslide. The Soviet Union had experienced internal stagnation and ethnic separatism. Although highly centralized until its final years, the country was made up of 15 top-level republics that served as the homelands for different ethnicities. By late 1991, amid a catastrophic political crisis, with several republics already departing the Union and Gorbachev continuing the waning of centralized power, the leaders of three of its founding members, the Russian, Belorussian, and Ukrainian SSRs, declared that the Soviet Union no longer existed. Eight more republics joined their declaration shortly thereafter. Gorbachev resigned on 25 December 1991 and what was left of the Soviet parliament voted to dissolve the union.
The following lists events that happened during 1938 in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
Sergey Vladimirovich Surovikin is a Russian army general who serves as head of the Coordinating Committee for Air Defence under the Council of Defence Ministers of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) since September 2023.
Operation Synytsia was an operation conducted by Ukraine's Main Directorate of Intelligence to facilitate the defection of Russian Mi-8 helicopter pilot Maxim Kuzminov. After previously arranging his defection and the simultaneous escape of his family, on 9 August 2023, Kuzminov turned off radio communications and landed near Poltava, Kharkiv Oblast, where Ukrainian forces received him.
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