Spy story

‘Russian intelligence must save world from nuclear war,’ says Soviet double-agent George Blake

On his 95th birthday, one of the Cold War’s most famous spies, who served as a double agent for the Soviet Union and escaped to Moscow after being caught by Britain, insists that intelligence services can still play a decisive role in international affairs.

“There is a real war going on between good and evil,” George Blake wrote in a message addressed to “young recruits” at the SVR, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service. “You mission will be a difficult one – to save the planet when its destruction in a nuclear war has again become a possibility due to the irresponsible actions of politicians, and where terrorism leaves its bloody traces in every part of the world.”

Without specifying names, he said intelligence officers were battling a “devious enemy, the possibility of whose final defeat gives me energy to live.”