George Blake, notorious double agent who defected to the Soviet Union, dies age 98

George Blake

George Blake, the notorious double agent who defected to the Soviet Union after fleeing across the Iron Curtain, has died.

The Russian foreign intelligence announced that the notorious traitor and spy passed away on Saturday in Moscow, aged 98.

Blake had been living in Russia ever since escaping from Wormwood Scrubs jail in 1966, just five years into a 42-year sentence for treason.

"We received some bitter news — the legendary George Blake passed away," said Sergei Ivanov, spokesman for Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence agency, formerly the KGB.

Mr Ivanov told the TASS state news agency that "he sincerely loved our country and admired our people’s achievements during World War II".

Blake was born George Behar in Rotterdam in Holland, the son of a Dutch mother and a Jewish father, who was born in Istanbul but who acquired British citizenship fighting for the British army with great distinction in the First World War.

He was a member of the Dutch resistance during the Second World war and eventually fled the Nazis, arriving in London in 1943. A year later he was helping the Secret Intelligence Service and working for MI6 permanently from about 1947.

He was posted to the British embassy in Seoul in 1950 where he was captured by the advancing North Korean army and taken prisoner by the Communist forces, who ‘turned’ him.

“I joined the Communist side not because I was well or badly treated. That had nothing to do with it,” he wrote in his autobiography. “I joined because of its ideals.”

He was released three years later and began working for MI6 in Berlin at the height of the Cold War where he began to spy for the Soviet Union, betraying agents until his capture.

Blake has always insisted that he had an undertaking from his KGB handlers that nobody he named would be executed.

But his actions have been blamed for at least two deaths — those of Lieutenant-General Robert Bialek, an east German who had defected to the West, was captured in west Berlin, smuggled back to the east and executed; and Petr Popov, a Soviet military intelligence officer who was working for the CIA and who was executed in Moscow in 1960.

Blake, who holds the rank of lieutenant colonel in the former KGB, remains a Russian hero and to mark his 85th birthday in 2007 was awarded the Order of Friendship medal by Vladmir Putin, the Russian president.

Over the years he has also received the Order of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner, the Order of the Patriotic War 1st Class and the Order for Personal Courage.

In an official interview in 2012 to mark his 90th birthday, he told Rossiyskaya Gazeta: “These are the happiest years of my life, and the most peaceful. When I worked in the West, I always had the risk of exposure hanging over me. That is how it was. Here I feel free.

“All those twists and turns of fate led to a miracle. I have a connection with my children and grandchildren in England, who often come to visit. And here I have my wife and son whom I love very much.

“Looking back on my life, everything seems logical and natural. I have known how to adapt well wherever life has taken me, even when I was in the [Wormwood] Scrubs prison. I always try to find something positive.”