Deaths on February 28

Arkady Shevchenko, Ukrainian diplomat (b. 1930)

Arkady Nikolayevich Shevchenko (Ukrainian: Аркадій Миколайович Шевченко, Russian: Аркадий Николаевич Шевченко; October 11, 1930 – February 28, 1998) was a Soviet diplomat who was the highest-ranking Soviet official to defect to the West.

Shevchenko joined the Soviet diplomatic service, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as a young man and rose through its ranks to become an advisor to Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. In 1973, he was appointed Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations (USG). During his assignment at the UN headquarters, in New York City, Shevchenko began to pass Soviet secrets to the CIA because he could not objectively fulfill his mission of impartiality to the United Nations. In 1978, he cut his ties to the Soviet Union and defected to the United States, where he lived for the rest of his life.