Famed KGB double agent, Oleg Gordievsky, has died at his Surrey, UK home at the age of 86.
The former Soviet secret agent defected to Britain in 1985 after being smuggled out of the country in the boot of a car.
His death is not being treated as suspicious and he died peacefully in his home, the BBC reported.
Gordievsky was the most prominent Soviet agent to defect to Britain during the Cold War.
He provided Britain with reports on Soviet operations for more than a decade, using his position as a colonel in the KGB to acquire secret information.
Oleg Gordievsky (pictured right) escaped to London from Moscow with the help of MI6 Credit: PA Archive
Originally recruited in 1974, Gordievsky became Britain’s star source inside the KGB after being posted to the Soviet secret service’s London bureau.
In May 1985, having just been promised the job of head of station in London, he was suddenly summoned back to Moscow and accused of being a spy.
He eventually escaped to London with the help of MI6, who smuggled him across the border into Finland after escaping from his KGB minders.
It was another six years before he was reunited with his Leila, his wife, and children. Mariya, his eldest daughter, was 11 when she arrived in London in 1991, and his second child Anna was 10.
The KGB double agent was reunited with his wife Leila six years after he was smuggled to Britain from Russia Credit: Neville Marriner/Shutterstock
In 1983, Gordievsky tipped off his British handlers that Moscow was so paranoid about a potential surprise attack by the West that it had begun planning a pre-emptive nuclear strike. Nato subsequently curtailed its Able Archer military exercise, averting the crisis.
In 1985, information passed on by Mr Gordievsky led Sir Geoffrey Howe, the then foreign secretary, to expel 25 Soviet diplomats who were all accused of being undercover KGB spies.
Sir Geoffrey hailed it as “a very substantial coup for our security forces” at the time.
Oleg Gordievsky said ‘I’m more British now than Russian’ when being made a CMG by the late Queen Elizabeth II Credit: Martin Keene/PA Archive
After his defection, Gordievsky lived under police protection in Godalming, Surrey.
“I’m more British now than Russian,” he said in 2007 after being made a Companion of the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) by the late Queen Elizabeth II.
“Of course, I don’t have the subtlety and politeness which is typical of Britain.”
