Famed British double agent George Blake, who spied for the Soviet KGB in the 1950s before defecting to the East, has died at the age of 99, Russian news agencies reported.
"Today, the legendary intelligence agent George Blake died. He sincerely loved our country, admired the feats of our people during the Second World War," Sergei Ivanov, the spokesman for the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), told TASS, reports Agence France-Presse.
The last survivor of the famous generation of British double agents, who has lived in Russia since the Soviet era, in an interview with Russian television in 2017 expressed the hope that the collapse of the USSR and the fall of communist rule was only "a stage on the long road to true socialism."
A prisoner in North Korea during the Korean War, Blake himself offered his services to the Soviets after witnessing American bombing of civilians.
He leaked the names of hundreds of Western intelligence officers to the KGB and revealed the existence of a secret tunnel in East Berlin used to spy on the Soviets.
Blake was exposed by a Polish double agent, so he was sentenced to 1961 years in prison in Great Britain in 42. Five years later he escaped using a rope ladder.
He then crossed over to East Germany and continued east to Moscow, where he received a hero's welcome.
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