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Former British and Soviet spy George Blake, one of the most famous double agents of the Cold War era, has died at the age of 98, Russian media confirmed.
“Very sad news has come: the legendary George Blake has passed away,” Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) spokesman Sergei Ivanov told Russia’s Sputnik news agency.
Also Russian President Vladimir Putin has expressed his condolences to Blake’s family and friends.
“Please accept my sincere condolences on the passing of George Blake. Colonel Blake was a brilliant professional with special vitality and courage,” said Putin, who also comes from the secret services.
In particular, Putin has highlighted the “incalculable value” of Blake’s contribution to ensuring strategic parity and maintaining peace on the planet. “This legendary man will remain in our hearts forever,” he stressed.
Double Agent for the Soviet Union
Blake was born in 1922 in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, as George Behar, son of a Sephardic Jew who fought in the British ranks in World War I and obtained citizenship of that country.
He collaborated with the resistance against the Nazis and fled to the United Kingdom through Gibraltar. He joined the British secret services, MI6, in 1948, and spent three years in prison in North Korea.
For nine years, after being sent to Berlin, he worked as a double agent for the Soviet Union, which thanks to his information was able to detect at least 40 British agents sent to Eastern Europe, 500 according to Blake’s own estimates.
He was finally discovered after the betrayal of a Polish spy and sentenced to 42 years in prison, imprisoned in 1961, but in 1966 he managed to flee and travel to the Soviet Union, where he taught at the KGB spy academy in Moscow and was decorated with the Order of Lenin, the Order of Friendship, the Order of the Red Banner and the Order of the Patriotic War.
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