Chilly War double agent George Blake dies at 98

Previous British intelligence officer George Blake, who worked as a double agent for the Soviet Union in the course of the Cold War, has died in Russia at the age of 98.

Russia’s Overseas Intelligence Service announced his demise in a statement Saturday, The Related Press claimed. The statement didn’t give details about his dying.

Russian President Vladimir PutinVladimir Vladimirovich PutinArms command held hostage Paul Manafort: Handmaiden to dictators Condition Office claims Russian safety company behind Navalny poisoning A lot more praised Blake as a “brilliant professional” and a man of “remarkable bravery,” according to the AP.

Blake’s scenario was a person of the most infamous in the course of the Chilly War. Britain statements that he uncovered the identities of hundreds of Western brokers, some of whom were in the long run executed, Reuters mentioned.

Right after he was found out, Blake was sentenced to 42 years in Wormwood Scrubs prison in London in 1961. Five a long time later on, he escaped with the enable of other inmates and activists and manufactured it to East Berlin undetected. He expended the rest of his life in the Soviet Union, according to the BBC.

Blake was born in the Netherlands in 1922 and moved to England in the early 1940s. He joined the British armed forces and then the U.K.’s Mystery Intelligence Company, also regarded as MI6, in 1944.

Blake was captured by North Korean troopers in 1950 and secretly turned a communist through the three years he was imprisoned, according to Encyclopedia Britannica.

In an job interview in 1991 even though in Moscow, Blake stated he believed the earth was headed toward communism.

“It was an ideal which, if it could have been reached, would have been perfectly truly worth it,” he explained to Reuters at the time.