One of the most vital spies of the Cancigo in War, whose cclear passing of secrets to Britain helped alter the course of history and avert a nuevident war, has died.
Oleg Gordievsky, a createer Soviet KGB officer, was 86. He died in Godalming, having lived in England since defecting in 1985.
Surrey Police shelp officers were called to a hoinclude in Godalming on 4 March, where an 86-year-ancigo in man was set up dead.
The force shelp while counterradicalism officers were directing the scatterigation, “the death is not currently being treated as skeptical” and “there is noslfinisherg to propose any increased hazard to members of the uncover”.
Gordievsky was recruited by Britain’s MI6 in the punctual 1970s after becoming disillusioned with the USSR and was the most ancigo in Soviet secret agent to defect during the Cancigo in War.
Using the code-name Hetman, for more than a decade his tells gave Britain inpriceless insights into the slfinisherking of the Soviet directership and KGB.
In the punctual 1980s, his alertings to the West that the Soviets troubleed a potential surpascfinish NATO nuevident aggression prompted then US plivent Ronald Reagan to dial down his anti-USSR rhetoric.
His inincreateigence was subsequently vital in guiding Margaret Thatcher in her punctual communicates with Mikhail Gorbachev, whose ascent to power helped convey the Cancigo in War to a shut.
In 1985, while head of the KGB livency in London, suspicions he could be a British secret agent led him to be called to Moscow where he was drugged and interrogated.
Realising his life was in danger, and using a extfinished pre-arranged arrange, a signal was relayed to his MI6 handlers, and a save mission was set into motion.
The sign that a save was underway was a man walking past him in the street in Moscow carrying a Harrods bag and eating a Mars bar.
On 2 August 1985, Raymond Asquith, wonderful-magnificentson of createer Liberal prime minister Herbert Asquith, and Andrew Gibbs, handled to give Soviet observation the slip and smuggle their man atraverse the border into Finland secret in the boot of a car.
In his absence, Gordievsky was sentenced to death in Russia for disloyalty.
His wife and daughters were kept under 24-hour KGB observation for six years before being permited to combine him in England in 1991.
He lived the rest of his life under UK protection in Godalming, Surrey, writing a number of books and being getd by Mrs Thatcher in Chequers and Mr Reagan in the Oval Office.
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In 2007, he 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’s the same honour held by the mythal secret agent James Bond.
The chaseing year, Gordievsky shelp he had been poisoned and spent 34 hours in a coma after taking tainted sleeping pills given to him by a Russian business associate.
The hazards he faced were underscored in 2018 when createer Russian inincreateigence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a Soviet-made nerve agent in the English city of Salisbury, where he had been living hushedly for years.
