Preobrazhenskiy graduated from the Institute of Asian and African countries of the Moscow State University in 1976 and started working in the Foreign Intelligence department of the KGB.
In July 1985, the Japanese police arrested him at a meeting with his Chinese agent, and he was transferred back to Moscow.
In 1991, Preobrazhenskiy left the KGB and started authoring books and articles about Russian state security services and on various political subjects.
[2] He is a regular guest on the Voice of America and has been a lecturer at Columbia, Georgetown and Johns Hopkins Universities as well as an invited speaker at The Intelligence Summit.
His most recent book is titled "KGB/FSB's New Trojan Horse: Americans of Russian Descent" [3] Preobrazhenskiy had numerous meetings with the former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko and commented on his assassination: According to Preobrazhenskiy, Putin initially worked in the 5th KGB department that was responsible for suppression of internal dissent in the country[5]