The death of a double agent of Egyptian origin .. Russia describes him as a hero, and Britain considers him a traitor

George Blake, the last spy of the Cold War

The former double agent, George Blake, died in Russia, today, Saturday, at the age of 98, leaving the last British spies whose secret work for the Soviet Union was an insult to the intelligence establishment when it was revealed during the height of the Cold War.

Blake was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in 1922 to a Dutch mother and an Egyptian Jewish father who acquired British citizenship.

He fled the Netherlands during World War II before joining the Dutch Resistance as a messenger and arriving in Britain in January 1943. Blake joined the British Navy at that time and began working with the British intelligence service (MI6) in 1944.

Britain says that the former spy revealed the identity of hundreds of Western agents in Eastern Europe during the 1950s, and that some of them were executed as a result of Blake's betrayal.

Blake was revealed to be a Soviet spy in 1961, and he was sentenced to 42 years in prison in London.

But he managed to escape after five years using a ladder of ropes, and with the help of the prisoners who were accompanying him.

He was smuggled out of Britain in a pickup truck, secretly crossing Western Europe and crossing the Iron Curtain to East Berlin.

Blake spent the rest of his life in the Soviet Union and then Russia, where he was a celebrated feast of heroes.

Moscow considers him a hero and was given the rank of colonel in Russian intelligence.

And despite the collapse of the Soviet Union to which Blake devoted his life, the spy never regretted his actions.

Blake was the last survivor of a generation of British spies who were successfully recruited by the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

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