Bohdan Stashynsky

In 1966, Stashynsky was released from prison early on parole and was reportedly handed over to the CIA. According to the historian of the Soviet state security organs Boris Volodarsky, after Stashynsky was released from prison, he underwent plastic surgery. Bohdan Stashynsky and Inge Stashinsky were given new identities and provided asylum by South Africa in 1984, where they live under false names to this day, although this version is questioned by many. The further fate of Stashinsky and his wife is unknown. It is suggested that he may have settled in the United States or another Western country, with some reports in the 2000s suggesting that, together with Inge, he had visited his native village in present-day Ukraine.

Stashynsky was put on trial for the two murders in October 1962, and sentenced to eight years in prison. Very unusually, legally Stashinskyi was an accessory to his own crime. In German law there is no minimum and maximum penalty for assisting a crime. Getting good-time credit, he served 4 years and was released. Explaining what motivated him to kill Rebet, Stashynsky told a court that he had been told that Rebet was "the leading theorist of the Ukrainians in exile," since "in his newspapers Suchasna Ukrayina (Contemporary Ukraine), Chas (Time), and Ukrayinska Trybuna (Ukrainian Tribune) he not so much provided accounts of daily events as developed primarily ideological issues."

In 1961, Inge returned to East Berlin to give birth to their son, Peter, but Stashynsky was unable to visit them. In August, Peter suddenly developed a fever and died at four months old. The KGB relented after the family tragedy and allowed him to travel to East Berlin for the baby's funeral. Against KGB orders, Stashynsky took his Joseph Lehmann identity card with him to East Germany, as well as other documents that would confirm his identity as a KGB agent. On 13 August 1961, hours before their son's funeral, Stashynsky and his wife fled on foot from her parents’ home in Dallgow, walking to the town of Falkensee to avoid any KGB agents that would intercept them at the Dallgow train station. They took a taxi to East Berlin, where he used the Lehmann identity card at a checkpoint. They then traveled to West Berlin via train, where he defected to U.S. officials at a police station.

After Stashynsky's defection, the Soviet government tried to avert negative exposure. On 13 October 1961, the Soviet Union arranged a press conference in East Berlin where Soviet secret service agent Stefan Lippolz blamed the murder on the cashier of Bandera's own organization, Dmytro Myskiv, who had since died. However, it was established that Dmytro Myskiv was not in Munich when Bandera was assassinated but was in Rome at the time.

Stashynsky was honoured by Moscow with the Order of the Red Banner by Shelepin for his work and given his final assignment to kill Yaroslav Stetsko. Stetsko, also living in Munich, was a prominent anti-Soviet Ukrainian fascist leader and also the President of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations. He was to be assassinated in 1960, but it could not be perpetrated for reasons which have not been clarified.

In 1957, the KGB trained the 25-year-old Stashynsky to use a spray gun that fired a jet of poison gas from a crushed cyanide capsule. The gas was designed to induce cardiac arrest, making the victim's death look like a heart attack. Stashynsky used the weapon to kill Lev Rebet in 1957. On 15 October 1959, he used an improved version of the same gas gun to assassinate Stepan Bandera in Munich.

Stashynsky met and fell in love with an East German woman, Inge Pohl, in 1957. At first his bosses tried to persuade him not to marry a foreigner, but he persisted. However, the KGB demanded that Pohl become a Soviet citizen and KGB agent. Although he was unhappy with the arrangement, Stashynsky nevertheless agreed as it was the only way he could marry Pohl. After they were married, the KGB bugged their Moscow apartment and heard them express anti-Soviet sentiments. The KGB would not let the couple travel abroad together out of fear of defection, which the couple was indeed planning.

In 1953, he was sent to Kyiv to continue studies in espionage. In 1954, he was sent to East Germany under the name Josef Lehmann where he perfected his knowledge of German. In 1956, Stashynsky often traveled to Munich, West Germany, where he began to perfect his false identity.

Born to a family of villagers in Barszowice near Lwów, Stashynsky completed his early education in 1948 and studied to become a teacher. His family were supporters of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). Stashynsky's three sisters were members of the organization. In 1950, Stashynsky was arrested for traveling without a ticket on public transportation to Lviv from his village. After agreeing to act as an informer, he was released. Through his sisters, he infiltrated the workings of the UPA and forwarded the information to the MGB.

Bohdan Mykolayovych Stashynsky (Ukrainian: Богда́н Микола́йович Сташи́нський, born 4 November 1931) is a former Soviet spy who assassinated the Ukrainian nationalist leaders Lev Rebet and Stepan Bandera in the late 1950s. He defected in West Berlin in 1961.