Following the launch of Operation Barbarossa, an NKVD Soviet agent named Alexander Demyanov penetrated the Abwehr in late 1941 by posing as a member of a pro-German underground resistance with alleged access to the Soviet military leadership—this was a complete fabrication concocted by the GRU and NKVD, who used Demyanov as a double agent.[80] During the Autumn of 1942, Demyanov informed his German handlers that he was working as a communications officer at the Soviet HQ in Moscow, which would give him access to important intelligence, a ruse that managed to fool the Nazi intelligence commander on the Russian front at the time, Reinhard Gehlen.[81] Demyanov manipulated the military operations around Stalingrad, convincing Gehlen that Army Group Center would be unable to move west of Moscow to aide General Friedrich Paulus and the Sixth Army, which was ultimately encircled by the Red Army.[82]