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Former British intelligence officer George Blake was exposed and sentenced to 42 years in prison in 1961. He managed to escape from prison and reach East Berlin. Later, he lived in the USSR, then in Russia.
In Russia, at the age of 98, the famous British defector George Blake died. Condolences to Blake’s family were posted on the Kremlin’s website on December 26.
In a message on behalf of Russian President Vladimir Putin, it is said that “Colonel Blake was a brilliant professional, with particular vitality and courage.” “During years of hard and intense work, he made a truly invaluable contribution to ensuring strategic parity and maintaining peace on the planet,” Putin said.
At the same time, in 2019, he stated in an interview with the Financial Times that high treason is “the greatest crime that can be on earth.”
The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service informed RBC that Blake died as a result of sudden cardiac arrest.
Reuters recalls that Blake, as a British intelligence officer for MI6, collaborated with the secret services of the Soviet Union in the 1950s. He delivered hundreds of secret agents from Western Eastern European countries to Moscow, some of whom were executed.
In 1961, Blake was exposed and sentenced to 42 years in prison. The agency notes that his case was one of the highest-profile trials during the Cold War, along with the so-called Cambridge Five case.
He was serving his sentence in London’s Wormwood Scrubs Prison. However, in 1966, Blake managed to escape and reach East Berlin, which was under Soviet control. He spent the rest of his life in the Soviet Union, then in Russia.
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