Bogdan Nikolaevich Stashinsky

Borschowice, Lviv Voivodeship, Republic of Poland

saboteur, assassin, agent, scout

Eliminate Ukrainian nationalists, kill Bandera.

KGB of the USSR

Stashinsky grew up in a family with ties to the Ukrainian nationalist movement. He was recruited by the MGB at the age of nineteen and initially distinguished himself in operations against the Ukrainian underground. After training for work abroad, he was sent to Berlin in 1954, from where he periodically traveled to West Germany. In Munich, he tracked down and then killed (poisoned with a pistol that sprayed a toxic substance) Rebet and Bandera. For the successful completion of the operations, Stashinsky was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. In 1961, he married East German Inge Pohl, against the wishes of the KGB leadership, who recalled him to Moscow and soon made it clear that his career as a foreign agent was over.

In August 1961, taking advantage of Stashinsky's permission to attend the funeral of their newborn son in Berlin, Bohdan and Inge fled to West Berlin on the eve of the closure of the border by the GDR authorities. Stashinsky surrendered to the West German police, confessed to two murders, and gave a detailed account of the operations of the Soviet secret services. His trial, which took place in 1962, drew widespread attention to the KGB's operations abroad and the Ukrainian nationalist movement. Having received a scandalously lenient sentence (eight years in prison), Stashinsky did not serve it in full and was secretly released in 1966. The West German authorities took him abroad, probably to the United States or South Africa, where Stashinsky settled under a new name and, presumably, with a changed appearance. His subsequent fate is unknown.