Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky (Russian: Оле́г Влади́мирович Пенько́вский; 23 April 1919 – 16 May 1963), codenamed Hero (by the CIA) and Yoga (by MI6)[1] was a Soviet military intelligence (GRU) colonel during the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Penkovsky was the highest-ranking Soviet official to provide intelligence for the West up until that time, and is one of several individuals credited with altering the course of the Cold War.

In 1955, he was appointed military attaché in Ankara, Turkey, but was recalled after he had reported his superior officer, and later other GRU personnel for a breach of regulations, which made him unpopular in the department.

He was selected for the post of military attaché in India, but the KGB had uncovered the history of his father's death, and he was suspended, investigated, and assigned in November 1960 to the State Committee for Science and Technology.

Penkovsky approached American students on the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge in Moscow in July 1960 and gave them a package in which he offered to spy for the United States.

Wright noted that, unlike Igor Gouzenko and other earlier defectors, Penkovsky did not reveal the names of any Soviet agents in the West but only provided organisational detail, much of which was known already.

[9] While the weight of opinion seems to be that Penkovsky was genuine, the debate underscores the difficulty faced by all intelligence agencies of determining information offered from the enemy.

Bagley says that after this detection, Penkovsky was allowed by the KGB to continue spying for the U.S. and Britain for sixteen more months while a scenario was created in which he could be arrested and charged in such a way that would not reveal who, in Western Intelligence, had betrayed him.

The documents provided by Penkovsky showed that the Soviet Union was not prepared for war in the area, which emboldened Kennedy to risk the operation in Cuba.

They worked hard, shadowing British diplomats, to build up a "discovery case" against Penkovsky so that they could arrest him without throwing suspicion on their own moles.

This was prior to President Kennedy's address to the US revealing that U-2 spy plane photographs had confirmed intelligence reports that the Soviets were installing medium-range nuclear missiles in Cuba, in what was known as Operation Anadyr.

Kennedy was consequently deprived of information from a potentially important intelligence agent, such as reporting that Khrushchev was already looking for ways to defuse the situation, which might have lessened the tension during the ensuing 13-day stand-off.

[15] That information might have reduced the pressure on Kennedy to launch an invasion of the island, which could have risked Soviet use of 9K52 Luna-M-class tactical nuclear weapons against U.S.

Upon servicing the dead drop (which held a letter ostensibly from him) that same day, a CIA officer by the name of Richard Jacob, who was stationed at the U.S. Embassy under diplomatic cover, was arrested.

Alexander Zagvozdin, chief KGB interrogator for the investigation, stated that Penkovsky had been "questioned perhaps a hundred times" and that he had been shot and cremated.

[20] In a 2010 interview, Suvorov said that he had been shown a film in which a man said to be Penkovsky was bound to a metal stretcher with wire and pushed live into a crematorium.

The programme featured original covert KGB footage showing Penkovsky photographing classified information and meeting up with Janet Chisholm, a British MI6 agent stationed in Moscow.

Penkovsky was portrayed by Eduard Bezrodniy in the 2014 Polish thriller Jack Strong, about Ryszard Kukliński, another Cold War spy.