Allen Dulles said: "The secret services keep quiet about successful operations, and their failures speak for themselves." However, we are still aware of several successful operations of the KGB of the USSR abroad, which cannot be called failure.
Operation Whirlwind
Late in the evening of November 3, 1956, during negotiations with the Soviet side, the officers of the KGB of the USSR arrested the new Minister of Defense of Hungary, Pal Malater. Already at 6 o'clock in the morning on November 4, the Soviet command sent the code signal "Thunder" on the air. It marked the beginning of Operation Whirlwind to suppress the Hungarian uprising.
The task of suppressing the mutiny was entrusted to the Special Corps. In total, more than 15 tank, mechanized, rifle and air divisions, the 7th and 31st airborne divisions, and a railway brigade (more than 60 thousand people) participated in Operation Whirlwind.
To capture city objects, special detachments were created, they were supported by 150 paratroopers and BMDs, and 10-12 each. In each detachment there were employees of the KGB of the USSR: Major General Pavel Zyryanov, Major General Kuzma Grebennik (to be appointed military commandant of Budapest), the famous illegal Alexander Korotkov. Their tasks included organizing the capture and arrest of members of the Imre Nagy government.
In one day, all the main objects in Budapest were captured, members of the Imre Nagy government took refuge in the Yugoslav embassy.
On November 22, at 18.30, cars and a small bus lined up outside the Yugoslavian Embassy in Budapest, carrying diplomats and members of the Hungarian government, including Imre Nagy. The colonel of the KGB ordered the passengers of the bus to leave, but did not wait for a reaction. The bus was packed with several armored personnel carriers. KGB Chairman Serov reported to the Central Committee that “I. Nagy and his group were arrested, taken to Romania and are under reliable protection."
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Liquidation of Stepan Bandera
It was not so easy to liquidate Stepan Bandera. He always went with bodyguards. In addition, Western intelligence services took care of him. Thanks to their assistance, several attempts on the life of the OUN leader were thwarted.
But the KGB knew how to wait. KGB agent Bogdan Stashinsky came to Munich several times (under the name of Hans-Joachim Budait), trying to find traces of Stepan Bandera. In the search helped … a simple telephone directory. Bandera's pseudonym was "Poppel" (German fool), and Stashinsky found him in the reference book. The address of the alleged victim was also listed there. Then a lot of time was spent on preparing for the operation, looking for escape routes, picking master keys, and so on.
When Stashinsky next arrived in Munich, he was already carrying a murder weapon (a miniature double-barreled device loaded with ampoules of potassium cyanide), an inhaler and protective pills.
The KGB agent began to wait. Finally, on October 15, 1959, at about one in the afternoon, he saw Bandera's car pull into the garage. Stashinsky used a pre-prepared master key and was the first to enter the entrance. There were people there - some women were talking on the upper platforms.
Initially, Stashinsky wanted to wait for Bandera on the stairs, but he could not stay there for a long time - he could be found. Then he decided to go down the stairs. The meeting took place at Bandera's apartment on the third floor. The Ukrainian nationalist recognized Bogdan - before that he had already met him in church. To the question "What are you doing here?" Stashinsky held out a newspaper bundle towards Bandera's face. A shot rang out.
Operation Toucan
In addition to actions of retaliation and organizing the suppression of uprisings, the KGB of the USSR also devoted a lot of effort to supporting the regimes that were pleasing to the Soviet Union abroad and the fight against unwanted ones.
In 1976, the KGB, together with the Cuban special service of the DGI, organized Operation Toucan. It consisted in the formation of the necessary public opinion in relation to the regime of Augusto Pinochet, who repeatedly declared that the Communist Party was its main enemy and that of Chile. According to the former KGB officer Vasily Mitrokhin, the idea of the operation belonged to Yuri Andropov personally.
Toucan pursued two goals: to give a negative image of Pinochet in the media and to stimulate human rights organizations to start active actions to exert external pressure on the Chilean leader. Information war has been declared. The third most popular American newspaper, The New York Times, has published as many as 66 articles on human rights in Chile, 4 articles on the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia and 3 articles on human rights in Cuba.
During Operation Toucan, the KGB also forged a letter accusing American intelligence of political persecution of the Chilean intelligence service DINA. Later, many journalists, including Jack Anderson of the New York Times, even used this forged letter as evidence of the CIA's involvement in the hard-hitting moments of Operation Condor, aimed at eliminating political opposition in several countries in South America.
Recruiting John Walker
The KGB was known for its many successful recruits of Western intelligence specialists. One of the most successful was the recruitment in 1967 of the American ransomware John Walker.
At the same time, the KGB ended up with the American KL-7 encryption machine, which was used by all US services to encrypt messages. According to journalist Pete Earley, who wrote a book about Walker, the recruitment of an American cryptographer created a situation "as if the US Navy opened a branch of its communications center right in the middle of Red Square."
All the years (17 years!) Until John Walker was declassified, the US military and intelligence forces were in a stalemate. Wherever the secret exercises, organized according to all the rules of secrecy, took place, the KGB officers were always nearby. Walker handed over the key tables to the encryption codes every day, but he involved his family in his agent network, which killed him.
He ended up in the dock thanks to the testimony of his ex-wife Barbara. He was sentenced to life in prison.
Release of Hezbollah hostages
On September 30, 1985, four employees of the Soviet embassy were captured in Beirut (two of them were KGB personnel Valery Myrikov and Oleg Spirin). The capture took place "according to the classics": blocking cars, black masks, shooting, threats. Consular officer Arkady Katkov tried to resist, but one of the attackers stopped him with a machine-gun burst.
The Lebanese group Khaled Bin al-Walid's Forces claimed responsibility for the seizure, but the KGB station in Beirut established that the real organizers of the seizure were the Shiite fundamentalists of Hezbollah and Palestinian Fatah activists. There was also information that the seizure of Soviet diplomats was coordinated with the radical representatives of the clergy of Iran, and the terrorists received the blessing of the religious leader of Hezbollah, Sheikh Fadlallah.
The capture had political goals. Hezbollah wanted to force Moscow to put pressure on Syria so that its government abandoned the operation to clean up the territories controlled by Fatah and Hezbollah in Tripoli and Beirut.
Despite the fact that Moscow complied with almost all the terrorists' demands, they were in no hurry to return the hostages. Volume 6 of the book "Essays on the History of Russian Foreign Intelligence Service" indicates that the Center invited its resident in Beirut to meet with the then spiritual leader of Hezbollah and put pressure on him. The meeting took place, the resident went all-in and said that "the USSR showed maximum patience, but can proceed to serious action."
The Ayatollah was informed that if the Soviet hostages were not released, then an accidental Soviet missile (for example, SS-18) could accidentally land in a Shiite shrine - the Iranian city of Qom or somewhere else during midday prayer. Ayatollah thought about it, and then said that he hoped with the help of Allah to free the hostages.
The Beirut KGB station also recruited several representatives of Imad Mugniy's inner circle (he led the seizure), and also arrested several of his relatives. The massive psychological pressure was justified: a month after the seizure, Soviet diplomats were at large.
