KGB Colonel, Son, Woman Defect to U.S.

The State Department today said a Soviet KGB colonel, accompanied by his 7-year-old son and a woman friend, has defected and is in the United States.

State Department spokesman Charles Redman confirmed reports that Viktor Gundarev defected in Athens.

In response to a question, Redman read a statement to reporters saying the three are in the United States and identifying Gundarev as a colonel in the Soviet KGB intelligence agency.

“Viktor P. Gundarev, his 7-year-old son, Maxim, and a friend of the Gundarev family, Galina N. Gromova, requested permission from the United States government to enter the United States,” the statement said.

Posted in Athens

“They have been granted that permission and are currently in the United States. I can confirm that Gundarev was a colonel in the KGB posted in Athens at the time of his defection.”

Redman declined to comment beyond his highly unusual statement confirming the defection.

A U.S. intelligence source said Thursday that Gundarev, accompanied by the two others, had defected in Athens last weekend. The source said Gundarev, 50, was working as a Soviet trade official in the Greek capital.

Gromova, 30, reportedly taught Russian diplomats’ children part time in Athens and was employed as Maxim Gundarev’s nanny.

Was Fleeing Wife

In Athens, an informed source identified Gromova as Gundarev’s mistress and said he fled to escape his wife, who had complained about her husband’s affair to Soviet Ambassador Viktor Stukalin.

The source said the ambassador asked Gundarev to see him last Friday to discuss the problem, but the meeting never took place. Instead, Gundarev picked up his son and Gromova and headed for Apollon Palace Hotel at Kavouri, a coastal resort near the American Hellinikon military base, the source said.

The hotel is used exclusively by U.S. troops based in Greece and has a 24-hour armed U.S. military guard.

In another version of the Gundarev defection, a State Department official who was asked about the case Thursday said the U.S. Embassy in Athens called police Saturday night after employees spotted a Soviet Embassy car “circling rapidly” around the American facility.

But Redman declined comment on whether that incident was related to the defection.

It is unusual for the U.S. government to officially confirm a KGB defection. The last official confirmation of a defection was in August when the State Department confirmed reports that top-level KGB officer Vitaly Yurchenko had defected.

Three months later, Yurchenko slipped away from his CIA handlers at a Washington restaurant. The Soviet Embassy produced him several days later for a dramatic news conference in which he said he had been kidnaped and drugged by CIA operatives. The State Department denied the charges but allowed him to return to Moscow.