Top KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky has died on the age of 86.
Code-named Hetman, Gordievsky was one of the vital spies of the Cold War.
Police within the south-eastern English county of Surrey mentioned officers had been referred to as to an tackle in Godalming on March 4, the place “an 86-year-old man was found dead at the property”.
It mentioned counter-terrorism officers are main the investigation, however “the death is not currently being treated as suspicious” and “there is nothing to suggest any increased risk to members of the public”.
For greater than a decade Gordievsky studies gave Britain invaluable insights into the considering of the Soviet management and the covert machinations of the KGB secret service.
In the early Eighties he was in a position to warn the West that fears among the many paranoid Soviet management of a shock NATO nuclear assault had introduced the 2 sides perilously near struggle, prompting US president Ronald Reagan to dial down his anti-USSR rhetoric.
His intelligence was subsequently essential in guiding British prime minister Margaret Thatcher in her early contacts with the reformist Mikhail Gorbachev, whose ascent to energy helped deliver the Cold War to a detailed.
But in 1985, simply as he had been appointed to the important thing submit of head of the KGB residency in London, he got here underneath suspicion as a British spy.
Summoned again to Moscow the place he was drugged and interrogated, he rapidly realised that his life was in peril and he wanted to flee.
Using an extended pre-arranged plan, a sign was relayed to his handlers at Britain’s MI6 international intelligence service.
A person strolling previous him on the street in Moscow carrying a Harrods bag and consuming a Mars bar was the signal that his message had been acquired and the rescue was underneath method.
On August 2, 1985, in a daring operation personally accepted by Thatcher, two MI6 officers, Raymond Asquith, great-grandson of former Liberal prime minister Herbert Asquith, and Andrew Gibbs, managed to provide the Soviet surveillance the slip and smuggle their man throughout the border into Finland hidden within the boot of a automobile.
In his absence, Gordievsky was sentenced to demise in Russia for treason.
Meanwhile, he established a brand new life, dwelling in a protected home in London, writing numerous books and being acquired by Thatcher in Chequers and Reagan within the Oval Office.
In 2007, the previous KGB officer was honoured by Queen Elizabeth II, being made a Companion of the Order of Saint Michael and St George (CMG) in a ceremony at Buckingham Palace.
It was, the press famous, the identical honour held by the fictional superspy James Bond.
Source: www.anews.com.tr