Anatoly Vasilyevich Trofimov (; July 14, 1940 – April 10, 2005) was a head of the Soviet

KGB The Committee for State Security (, ), abbreviated as KGB (, ; ) was the main security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1991. It was the direct successor of preceding Soviet secret police agencies including the Cheka, Joint State Polit ...

investigation department. He personally supervised all Soviet dissident cases including Sergei Kovalyov, Gleb Yakunin, Alexey Smirnov, and Yuri Orlov. He was later a deputy director of the Russian

Federal Security Service The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation �СБ, ФСБ России (FSB) is the principal security agency of Russia and the main successor agency to the Soviet Union's KGB; its immediate predecessor was the Federal Counterin ...

and became a mentor and supervisor of

Alexander Litvinenko Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko (30 August 1962 ( at WebCite) – 23 November 2006) was a British-naturalised Russian defector and former officer of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) who specialised in tackling organized crime, ...

. He was assassinated in April 2005 by unidentified gunmen in

Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...

Career

Soviet Union

As a deputy head of the investigation department of the Moscow branch of the Soviet

secret service, Trofimov supervised all cases of dissidents including Sergei Kovalyov, Gleb Yakunin, Alexey Smirnov, and Yuri Orlov.

Russia

Trofimov was regarded as an incorruptible serviceman loyal to

Boris Yeltsin Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin (1 February 1931 – 23 April 2007) was a Soviet and Russian politician and statesman who served as President of Russia from 1991 to 1999. He was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) from 1961 to ...

. He arrested several top politicians opposing Boris Yeltsin during the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis. Later he held offices of the Deputy Director of the Russian Counter-Intelligence service (FSK), and head of the FSB secret service for the Moscow region until February 1997 when he was fired.

His comments

* ''"A retired army general and a leader of Communist parliamentary opposition Lev Rokhlin was killed by the Russian secret services, and Putin will have to cover this up"'', according to Trofimov. * According to Marina Litvinenko, he said to Alexander Litvinenko: ''"Don't you see? They killed Rokhlin; surely that was a Kontora job. Now the guy who came in utinwill have to cover that up. He cannot afford to solve the case. It is like an insurance policy"''.

Romano Prodi

In October 1999 a scandal broke out in Italy about the alleged KGB connection of

Romano Prodi Romano Prodi (; born 9 August 1939) is an Italian politician who served as President of the European Commission from 1999 to 2004 and twice as Prime Minister of Italy, from 1996 to 1998, and again from 2006 to 2008. Prodi is considered the fo ...

, the Italian centre-left leader, former

Prime Minister of Italy The prime minister of Italy, officially the president of the Council of Ministers (), is the head of government of the Italy, Italian Republic. The office of president of the Council of Ministers is established by articles 92–96 of the Co ...

and former President of the

European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the primary Executive (government), executive arm of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with a number of European Commissioner, members of the Commission (directorial system, informall ...

. The information about Prodi was provided by Soviet defector

Vasili Mitrokhin Vasili Nikitich Mitrokhin (; March 3, 1922 – January 23, 2004) was an archivist for the Soviet Union's foreign intelligence service, the First Chief Directorate of the KGB, who defected to the United Kingdom in 1992. Mitrokhin first offer ...

. Litvinenko claims he was given this information by Trofimov, whom allegedly described Prodi as "our man in Italy".

Assassination

On April 10, 2005, Trofimov was gunned down in Moscow while driving a car, together with his wife. Alex Goldfarb and Marina Litvinenko. '' Death of a Dissident: The Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and the Return of the KGB'', The Free Press (2007) , page 137. His four-year-old daughter survived the assassination. Litvinenko, who knew Trofimov personally, told the media that he believed Trofimov's killing was a political assassination, and that Trofimov had opposed both the

Second Chechen War Names The Second Chechen War is also known as the Second Chechen Campaign () or the Second Russian Invasion of Chechnya from the Chechens, Chechen insurgents' point of view.Федеральный закон № 5-ФЗ от 12 января 19 ...

and the earlier appointment of

Vladimir Putin Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who has served as President of Russia since 2012, having previously served from 2000 to 2008. Putin also served as Prime Minister of Ru ...

as FSB chief.

References

External links

Slain Russian officer's wife dies
- BBC News
Alexander Stille, "The secret life of Mario Scaramella"
- Slate.com, Dec. 11, 2006. Alexander Stille is the author of ''The Sack of Rome: How a Beautiful European Country with a Fabled History and a Storied Culture Was Taken Over by a Man Named Silvio Berlusconi'', Penguin Books, 2006. {{DEFAULTSORT:Trofimov, Anatoly 1940 births 2005 deaths Deaths by firearm in Russia KGB officers Russian murder victims People murdered in Moscow People of the Federal Security Service People of the KGB People from Moscow Oblast Unsolved murders in Russia 2005 murders in Russia