High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky (Russian: Олег Владимирович Пеньковский; born April 23, 1919 in Vladikavkaz, North Ossetia, Soviet Russia; died May 16, 1963 in the Soviet Union), codenamed HERO, was a colonel with Soviet military intelligence (GRU) during the late 1950s and early 1960s who informed the United Kingdom and the United States about the Soviet emplacement of missiles in Cuba.