One of the most important spies of the Cold War, whose covert passing of secrets to Britain helped change the course of history and avert a nuclear war, has died.
Oleg Gordievsky, a former Soviet KGB officer, was 86. He died in Godalming, having lived in England since defecting in 1985.
Surrey Police said officers were called to a house in Godalming on 4 March, where an 86-year-old man was found dead.
The force said while counterterrorism officers were leading the investigation, “the death is not currently being treated as suspicious” and “there is nothing to suggest any increased risk to members of the public”.
Gordievsky was recruited by Britain’s MI6 in the early 1970s after becoming disillusioned with the USSR and was the most senior Soviet spy to defect during the Cold War.
Using the code-name Hetman, for more than a decade his reports gave Britain invaluable insights into the thinking of the Soviet leadership and KGB.
In the early 1980s, his warnings to the West that the Soviets feared a potential surprise NATO nuclear attack prompted then US president Ronald Reagan to dial down his anti-USSR rhetoric.
His intelligence was subsequently crucial in guiding Margaret Thatcher in her early contacts with Mikhail Gorbachev, whose ascent to power helped bring the Cold War to a close.
Image: The flat in Copenhagen where Gordievsky lived while working for the Soviet Embassy. Pic: AP
In 1985, while head of the KGB residency in London, suspicions he could be a British spy led him to be called to Moscow where he was drugged and interrogated.
Realising his life was in danger, and using a long pre-arranged plan, a signal was relayed to his MI6 handlers, and a rescue mission was set into motion.
The sign that a rescue 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, great-grandson of former Liberal prime minister Herbert Asquith, and Andrew Gibbs, managed to give Soviet surveillance the slip and smuggle their man across the border into Finland hidden in the boot of a car.
In his absence, Gordievsky was sentenced to death in Russia for treason.
His wife and daughters were kept under 24-hour KGB surveillance for six years before being allowed to join 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 received by Mrs Thatcher in Chequers and Mr Reagan in the Oval Office.
Read more from Sky News:
How George Foreman became a cultural icon
WWII veteran, 103, shares his experience as a bombardier
Image: Gordievsky is honoured by Queen Elizabeth in 2007. Pic: PA
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 fictional spy James Bond.
The following year, Gordievsky said 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 risks he faced were underscored in 2018 when former Russian intelligence 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 quietly for years.
