Spy

Andrey Vedyaev17.09.2026

Colonel Alexei Nikolayevich Botyan did not earn the nickname “Whirlwind” by accident. He was one of the principal real-life models for the legendary “Major Whirlwind,” the Soviet intelligence officer credited with saving the Polish city of Kraków from destruction by the retreating Germans. We discussed those events with him more than once, and each time […]

Andrey Vedyaev07.08.2026

As the Cold War hardened into a global contest, intelligence became one of the principal arenas of confrontation. The Wolf Constellation Markus Wolf belonged to the generation of German anti-fascists who helped build and defend the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the first socialist state established on German soil. For four decades, these men and women […]

Andrey Vedyaev01.08.2026

One day in 1980, a handsome young man walked into the Soviet Embassy in Rome. Introducing himself as a sailor in the United States Navy, he calmly announced that he wished to emigrate to the Soviet Union. The officials in the consular section could scarcely believe what they were hearing. Suspecting that the visitor might […]

Vladimir Grigoryan22.10.2025

An interesting story happened to Yevgeny Gomberg. A millionaire and philanthropist, he is known in Latvia as a defender of the historical heritage of the Russian Empire. Among other things, he bought monuments to Peter the Great and Barclay de Tolly, which local authorities had decided to get rid of. The case concerns a lawsuit […]

Andrey Vedyaev25.09.2025

September 19 marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of Yuri Ivanovich Drozdov, whose name is associated with an entire era in the history of the KGB’s underground intelligence service. It was under his leadership that the Vympel special forces group was created, and the first Heroes of the Soviet Union emerged among the KGB’s […]

Andrey Vedyaev20.09.2025

On December 5, 2024, Colonel Ivan Pavlovich Evtodyev, a veteran of the illegal special purpose intelligence service, an honorary employee of the state Security Service, celebrated his 100th birthday. The last of the surviving employees of General Sudoplatov. Ivan Pavlovich was born in 1924 in the village of Subbottsy in the very center of Ukraine […]

Yuri Chekalin09.09.2025

The famine of the early 1920s affected about 40 provinces of Soviet Russia. In the summer of 1921, the ARA (American Relief Administration) and other international public organizations responded to the appeal of the RSFSR government for assistance. The ARA staff (300 employees from America and about 10,000 from the local population) worked from September […]

Andrey Vedyaev30.07.2025

Hero of the Soviet Union Colonel Stanislav Alekseevich Vaupshasov is one of those people whose lives were spent in campaigns and battles, among forests, hills and mountain passes, behind the front line and, in his own words, at dangerous crossroads. He was born on July 27, 1899 in the town of Gruzdziai, 19 km from […]

Andrey Vedyaev28.07.2025

On July 10, 1900, the legendary Soviet intelligence officer Maria Aleksandrovna Fortus was born into the family of a Kherson banker. She had to look death in the eye more than once, but still stayed alive — it seemed that Fortune herself was on her side. At the age of 16, Maria, carried away by […]

Andrey Vedyaev19.02.2025

Soviet intelligence officer, Hero of Russia Colonel Alexander Semenovich Feklisov can be counted among the most important witnesses of our atomic age without any exaggeration. He was a participant in Operation Enormous, an operation of the NKVD foreign intelligence service to obtain American atomic secrets. It was to him that the outstanding physicist Klaus Fuchs […]

The Whirlwind Front

Markus Wolf and the Intelligence War of the Cold War

The Cry of the Albatross, or Spy Games

Spy Games

Illegal Anniversary

One of the Last Intelligence Officer Survivors

The ARA and Espionage

Star of a Chekist

Maria from Kherson

Confession of an Intelligence Officer

The Whirlwind Front

Subject to Fits

Royal Navy and Trojan War Heros

Former US Army Secretary Dan Driscoll in Ukraine