Petr Ivanovich Demchenko

Petr Ivanovich Demchenko was born in 1926 in the Starobelsk district of the Lugansk Oblast, Ukraine. He was called into the Soviet Army after World War II and served in an MGB government communications security in Parndorf, in the Soviet occupation zone of Austria. In December 1947, he defected to the town of Wels in the American zone of Austria. He was debriefed by U.S. Army CIC, during which he provided information about Soviet communications. He remained in Austria until about 1948-1949 using the name Peter Stepanikhin or Stepanovich. He subsequently traveled either to the United Kingdom or to Argentina, and he reportedly communicated with an anti-Soviet organization called the Russian Liberation Movement. A military tribunal sentenced Demchenko in absentia to a 25-year prison in 1949.[i]
[i] “KGB Wanted List,” 1969, p. 114.