Nikolai Yevgenievich Khokhlov (Cyrillic: Николай Евгеньевич Хохлов; 7 June 1922 – 17 September 2007) was a KGB officer who defected to the United States in 1954.

During the Battle for Moscow, the elder Khokhlov was transferred to a penal battalion because he had made unfavourable remarks about Joseph Stalin.

[1] In October 1941, Khokhlov, then 19 years old, was a member of an NKVD quartet who were trained to commit a spectacular attack against Nazi officers during their victory celebration in the occupied Moscow.

[2] Nikolai Khokhlov was a member of a successful military unit that fought behind the enemy lines during World War II.

In 1954, Khokhlov was sent by the KGB to Frankfurt to supervise two men whose task was to kill Georgiy Okolovich, a chairman of the National Alliance of Russian Solidarists.

Khokhlov was treated for thallium poisoning in Frankfurt in 1957,[5] as a result of a failed assassination attempt by the Thirteenth Department of the KGB.

[4] This case is often claimed to be the first radiological attack by the KGB, especially when comparison with the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko[6][7] is drawn, although it remains unclear what isotope was used, if any.

[8] Former KGB officer Stanislav Lekarev claimed, however, that Khokhlov was poisoned by radioactive polonium (not thallium), exactly as Litvinenko was.