According to the agency, a spokesman for the Russian foreign intelligence agency SVR said on December 26 that “books have been written about him, films have been made. In intelligence, he was highly respected and appreciated.”
The statement added that, in intelligence, he was highly respected and appreciated. He joked to himself: ‘I am a foreign car that has adapted to Russian roads.’
Black was a double agent who used his position as an officer in the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) known as MI6 to spy on the Soviet Union.
He was the last in a line of British spies whose covert operations for the Soviet Union insulted the country’s intelligence agency when it was found at the height of the Cold War.
Blake was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands in 1922, moved to England in 1942, and transferred to the Dutch division of the SIS in August 1944.
His life-long article on the UK government’s website states that Blake returned from captivity to work with Soviet as well as British intelligence, and betrayed many agents, including the former agency network, who were later executed.
Blake was arrested by British authorities in April 1961 and confessed to being a double agent for the Soviet Union.
The spy was sentenced to 42 years in prison, but escaped in 1966 after scaling the prison wall with a needle-knit ladder with the help of other inmates and two peace activists.
Blake was smuggled out of Britain in a camper van and made from Western Europe by crossing iron curtains from East Berlin.
He spent the rest of his life in the Soviet Union and then in Russia, where he was chosen as a hero.
In an interview with Reuters in Moscow in 1991, Blake said he believed the world was on the brink of communism.
“He was an ideal that, if he could achieve, would be right for him,” he said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin approved the double agent in 2007 as the country’s Order of Friendship. Putin issued a statement of condolence after Blake’s death, which was published on the Kremlin website.
“Colonel Black was a brilliant professional with special vigor and courage,” Putin said.
“During years of hard work, he has made a truly invaluable contribution to ensuring strategic equality and maintaining peace on Earth,” the statement added.
UK authorities believe the spy betrayed about 42૨ British agents, although Blake claimed the true figure was around 600.
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