The British newspaper The Guardian reported the death of Oleg Gordievsky, a former KGB officer who defected to Britain in 1985 and became one of the most valuable agents in the history of Western intelligence agencies. Gordievsky died at the age of 86 at his home in Surrey, where he lived under the protection of the British authorities. The publication calls him the highest-ranking defector from Soviet intelligence, emphasizing his key role in passing secret information to London during the Cold War.

Gordievsky’s KGB career reached its peak in the early 1980s, when he was sent to London in 1982 as a member of the Soviet residency. He soon became its head, becoming the KGB resident in Great Britain. However, Gordievsky was already secretly collaborating with the British intelligence service MI6, passing on information about Moscow’s activities and its spy network in the West. He was exposed in 1985 thanks to information received by the Soviet side from Aldrich Ames, a former CIA officer who turned out to be a double agent himself. After being summoned to Moscow under the pretext of an investigation, Gordievsky realized that his activities had been exposed and turned to his British handlers for help. In a daring operation, he was taken from the USSR to Finland, hidden in the trunk of a car with diplomatic plates, and then transported to Norway, from where he flew to Great Britain.

In the Soviet Union, Gordievsky was sentenced to death in absentia for treason. After escaping, he settled in Britain, where he lived under constant guard due to threats from the Soviet and later Russian intelligence services. The Guardian reports that Gordievsky's body was found in his home in Surrey, but the cause of death has not been specified at the time of publication. His death marked the end of a long and eventful career that left a notable mark on the history of intelligence.

According to the BBC, he passed on to MI6 information about the Soviet spy network in Western Europe, as well as preparations for possible military operations in the event of tensions with NATO. One of his key moments was warning the West of the Kremlin’s suspicions in 1983, when the USSR mistakenly interpreted NATO’s Able Archer exercises as preparations for a nuclear strike. This helped prevent an escalation that could have led to catastrophic consequences.

After his defection, Gordievsky consulted extensively for British and American intelligence agencies and wrote several books, including his autobiography, Next Stop Execution, published in 1995. His revelations about KGB methods and Soviet domestic politics have become a valuable source for historians. In 2007, Queen Elizabeth II awarded him the Order of St Michael and St George for his services to British security.