Gevork Vartanian, a Soviet-Armenian intelligence officer

Gevork Andreevich Vartanian was primarily responsible, together with his wife Goar Vartanian, for thwarting Operation Long Jump, concocted by Adolf Hitler, headed by Ernst Kaltenbrunner, and led by Otto Skorzeny, which was an attempt to assassinate Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt at the Tehran conference in 1943.

In 2003, relying on declassified documents, Yuri Lvovich Kuznets published a book called Tehran-43 or Operation Long Jump, which detailed Vartanian’s role at the Tehran Conference. A Soviet film, Teheran 43, which featured the French actor Alain Delon, was released in 1981.

In 2007 he met with Winston Churchill’s granddaughter and was congratulated for his great service to the Allies. Vartanian has been interviewed many times. Al Gurnov of Russia Today interviewed Vartanian on the eve of the Victory Day parade, which was broadcast on 9 May 2008. It was revealed that Vartanian’s identity was kept secret until 2000, when he finally received full credit for putting a stop to the assassination plot.

Gevork Vartanian died at 87 at Botkin Hospital in Moscow on 10 January 2012. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin attended the funeral and paid his respects to Vartanian’s widow Goar, a fellow intelligence officer, who died on 25 November 2019.

by Mano Chil