Putin praises ‘legendary’ double agent George Blake after death in Russia

Former MI6 agent turned spy George Blake died aged 98

‘Colonel Blake was an outstanding professional of special courage and life endurance,’ says Russian president (EPA)

Vladimir Putin has offered his condolences to the family of notorious double agent George Blake, who died in Russia on Boxing Day aged 98.

Blake was a former MI6 agent sentenced to life in prison in 1961 for spying for Russia during the Cold War.

He escaped from Wormwood Scrubs five years later, before making his way across Europe to Russia, where he remained for the rest of his life on a KGB pension in a state-owned flat in central Moscow.

In the message, Mr Putin said: “Colonel Blake was an outstanding professional of special courage and life endurance. 

“Throughout the years of his hard and strenuous efforts he made a truly invaluable contribution to ensuring the strategic parity and the preservation of peace on the planet.

“Our hearts will always cherish the warm memory of this legendary man.”

Born in Rotterdam in 1922, Blake moved to England where he enlisted with the royal navy, and was later asked to join the British Secret Service.

During the height of the Cold War, he leaked government secrets to the Soviet Union, including a secret tunnel the west, including the UK and the US, had built in Berlin to tap Soviet communications.

After fleeing from prison he started a new life in Moscow, marrying a girl called Ida whom he met on a boat on the Volga.

He had publicly said he approved of Mr Putin, who was himself a KGB agent in East Germany in the 1980s.

Even in his old age, Blake continued to show an interest in the secret service and he spent years in Russia giving master classes in espionage.

He said: “The years I have spent in Russia have been the happiest of my life and the most important thing for me is that I feel at home among the Russians.”

On Blake’s 95th birthday in 2017, Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) chief Sergei Naryshkin congratulated him, saying the spy had been a role model for the agency’s officers.

The state-owned news agency RIA Novosti said his death was confirmed by Sergei Ivanov, the head of the SVR press bureau.