High-ranking KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky has died at the age of 86.
Mr. Gordievsky, under the pseudonym “Hetman”, was one of the most important spies of the Cold War.
Surrey Police said officers were called to an address in Godalming on March 4 where “an 86-year-old man was found dead”.
The statement said the counter-terrorism unit was investigating but that “the death is not currently being treated as suspicious” and “there are no indications of an increased risk to the public.”
For more than a decade, Mr Gordievsky's reports provided Britain with invaluable insight into the thinking of the Soviet leadership and the secret machinations of the KGB.
In the early 1980s, he was able to warn the West that the paranoid Soviet leadership's fears of a surprise NATO nuclear attack had brought both sides to the brink of war, prompting US President Ronald Reagan to tone down his anti-Soviet rhetoric.
His intellect later played a decisive role in guiding Margaret Thatcher in her early dealings with the reformer Mikhail Gorbachev, whose rise to power helped end the Cold War.
However, in 1985, just as he was being appointed to the key post of head of the KGB residency in London, he came under suspicion as a British spy.
He was summoned back to Moscow, where he was drugged and interrogated. He quickly realized that his life was in danger and he had to escape.
Using a long-established plan, a signal was passed to his MI6 handlers.
A man walking past him on a Moscow street with a Harrods bag and eating a Mars bar was a sign that his message had been received and the rescue operation had begun.
On 2 August 1985, in a daring operation personally approved by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, two MI6 officers – Raymond Asquith, the great-grandson of former Liberal Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, and Andrew Gibbs – managed to evade Soviet surveillance and smuggle their man across the border into Finland, hiding him in the boot of a car.
Mr. Gordievsky was sentenced to death in absentia in Russia for treason.
Meanwhile, he built a new life, living in a safe house in London, writing several books and being received by Mrs Thatcher at Chequers and Mr Reagan in the Oval Office.
In 2007, the former KGB officer was honoured to be made a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) at a ceremony at Buckingham Palace.
As the press noted, the same honor was given to the fictional super agent James Bond.
Sourse: breakingnews.ie
