Spying on the Brits

Moscow

A Soviet double agent passed British secrets to Moscow in the late 1940s, Russia’s foreign intelligence service, SVR, said this week. In the 1930s, Viktor Bogomolets fled Stalin’s Great Terror for Britain, where he was recruited by British intelligence. But in 1945, the Soviets flipped him back, and Bogomolets funneled secrets to the KGB for years. “The information received from him was used in letters to the very highest level,” delivered directly to Stalin and his foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, the SVR said in a news release. The Kremlin used to refuse to comment about intelligence matters. But under President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent, it has been hyping the successes of Soviet-era intelligence. The British had no immediate comment.

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