Soviet defector Oleg Gordievsky dies in the UK at 86

Oleg Gordievsky, a former KGB colonel and famous Soviet defector who secretly worked for British intelligence and escaped to the West, has died at the age of 86 in his home in Surrey, UK, Tengrinews.kz reported.

Born in Moscow to a family of an NKVD officer, Gordievsky graduated from MGIMO and joined the First Chief Directorate of the KGB, which handled foreign intelligence. He served as a Soviet agent in Denmark and the United Kingdom.

In 1974, he was recruited by MI6 in Copenhagen and spent years passing valuable intelligence about the USSR to London. Media reports suggest he played a significant role in helping prevent a nuclear confrontation during a Cold War escalation between 1981 and 1983.

In 1985, Gordievsky was recalled from London to Moscow on suspicion of disloyalty. He managed to escape to Leningrad, then to the Finnish border, where British diplomats smuggled him across the border in a car trunk. He was sentenced to death in absentia by the Soviet Union for treason — a sentence that remained even after the USSR's collapse.

In 2007, Queen Elizabeth II awarded him the Order of St. Michael and St. George for services to national security.

Gordievsky was regarded as the most significant Western intelligence source since GRU Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, who was executed in 1963 for espionage. Follow “Zamin” news on “Telegram”