Viktor Oshchenko was a KGB and then Russian foreign intelligence officer specializing in scientific and technical intelligence, the work of the First Chief Directorate’s Directorate T and its Line X officers abroad. Under diplomatic cover as a counselor at the Russian embassy in Paris, he had been recalled to Moscow in the summer of 1992. Instead of returning, he disappeared on July 24, 1992, and defected to Britain with his wife and teenage daughter, requesting political asylum.

His defection was one of the first by a senior officer of the post-Soviet Russian intelligence service. Information he provided is widely reported to have helped British authorities identify Michael Smith, a British electronics engineer convicted in 1993 of passing defense secrets to the KGB.

Sources

• Associated Press. “Russia Recalled Spy Before He Defected to West.” Deseret News, August 15, 1992.
• Andrew, Christopher, and Vasili Mitrokhin. The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB. Basic Books, 1999.

Summary entry. A fuller, document-based profile is in preparation.