The former British dual agent George Blake has expired at the age of 98, Russian news agencies published on Saturday.
“Today, the fabulous intelligence officer George Blake is no more. He loved our country, admired the actions of our people during the Second World War,” Sergei Ivanov, spokeswoman for the Russian foreign intelligence services (SVR), told the state company TASS.
Born in Rotterdam on November 11, 1922, Blake was a past member of the Dutch resistance as the Second World War. He then went for the British foreign intelligence service MI6 during the Cold War.
He offered his help to the Soviets in the 1950s after witnessing American bombings of civilian communities in Korea.
He gave the names of numbers of agents to the KGB and revealed a secret tunnel in East Berlin used to spy on the Soviets.
Denounced by a Polish double agent, he was convicted in 1961 to 42 years in Great Britain. He managed to flee from prison five years later with the help of rope stairs and his cellmates.
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While on the run, George Blake survived to cross the Iron Curtain via the German Democratic Republic (GDR).
Celebrated as a hero in Moscow, he had experienced the rank of colonel by the Russian intelligence services. Despite the USSR’s fall to which he had dedicated his life, he never disliked his actions.
George Blake was the last surviving member of a famous generation of British double agents, the “moles” that the USSR had managed to recruit in the heart of the Cold War.