Haik Badalovich Ovakimian (Hayk Hovakimyan), Major General, USSR (11 August 1898, in Nakhchivan – 13 March 1967, in Moscow), better known as "the puppetmaster" in intelligence circles, was a leading Soviet NKVD spy in the United States.
Of Armenian descent, he was a member of the Communist Party from 1917 and joined the NKVD in 1931 while a graduate student at Moscow's Bauman Higher Technical School and went immediately into foreign intelligence.
After the German invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, he was traded back to Moscow for the release of several Americans and left the United States 23 July 1941.
Ovakimian then became head of the NKVD's American desk in Moscow, responsible for espionage activities of Soviet agents within the United States and Canada.
A hitherto unknown memo from Ovakimian, head of the KGB's American desk, notes that "following our instructions," Harry Dexter White "attained the positive decision of the US Treasury Department to provide the Soviet side with the plates for engraving German occupation marks.