In 1975, he was sent undercover abroad, as a journalist working for the Russian magazine New Times (Novoye Vremya) in Tokyo, Japan.
[3] Levchenko defected to the United States in October 1979,[1] and was instrumental in detailing the KGB's Japanese spy network to the U.S government, including in Congressional testimony in the early 1980s.
[5] Svetlana and Nikolai Ogorodnikov tried to hunt him down in the United States, but they were exposed in the Richard Miller spy case.
Kovalenko was in charge of a secretary and the interpreter of Aleksandr Vasilevsky who was Marshal of the Soviet Union during World War II.
Kovalenko was also the deputy director of the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee and a firm proponent of dealing with Japan from a position of strength during the Cold War (1945–91).