Defector double agent Oleg Gordievsky died in Britain

Oleg Gordievsky, who is called one of the most famous spies of the XX century, died at his home in Surrey at the 87th year of his life. It is reported by BBC News.

No cause of death was reported.

"Gordievsky has been living... under police protection since Moscow suspected him in 1985 and he narrowly escaped arrest, trial and execution by secretly crossing the border to Finland in the trunk of a car," writes the Daily Mail.

In the 1970s-80s, Gordievsky oversaw the UK and Scandinavia in The first main directorate of the KGB, reminds the BBC. Arriving as a resident in Britain, he soon began working with MI6 under the pseudonym Ovation. This cooperation lasted 11 years, until the Moscow leadership became suspicious and he was recalled to Russia in 1985.

However, in the summer of the same year, the British conducted a covert operation and took Gordievsky to Britain, where he continued to advise Western intelligence agencies.

In the USSR, Colonel Gordievsky was sentenced to death in absentia, and in the Russian Federation he was declared a traitor for transferring a large amount of classified information to the British.