Captain Anatoliy Pavlovich Zotov was a naval attaché to the Soviet Embassy in London who was expelled in December 1982 for conduct unbecoming a diplomat.

[3] Zotov was expelled after being accused of attempting to set up a network of agents to gather information about weapons systems and electronic hardware used by the Royal Navy during the Falklands War.

Later, at the Plymouth public library, Zotov requested books on submarines and photocopied an article from the magazine National Review.

Once expelled, Zotov would go on to vehemently denounce the charges of espionage,[2] while the Soviet Union suggested the incident overblown and a ploy to divert attention from recent intelligence failures in the UK.

[1] One confounding aspect of the Zotov expulsion is that Soviets were the ones to leak the story to Britain's domestic news agency, the Press Association, the night before the UK would officially confirm it.