Soviet spymaster Yuri Drozdov, 91, ran network of undercover agents

Yuri Drozdov, the Soviet spymaster who oversaw a sprawling network of KGB agents abroad, has died aged 91, Russia’s foreign intelligence agency said.

Drozdov died on Wednesday, the Foreign Intelligence Service, a KGB successor agency known under its Russian acronym SVR, said.

It did not give the cause of his death or any other specifics.

In 1979, Drozdov came to head a KGB department overseeing a network of undercover agents abroad, the job he held until resigning in 1991.

The agents who lived abroad under false identities were called “illegals” and considered the elite of Soviet intelligence.

In December 1979, Drozdov led an operation to storm the palace of Afghan president Hafizullah Amin that paved the way to Soviet invasion.

Drozdov also founded the KGB’s Vympel special forces unit.

A Second World War veteran, he joined the KGB in 1956 and was dispatched as a liaison officer with the East German secret police, the Stasi.

In 1962 he took part in the exchange of Soviet undercover agent Rudolf Abel, convicted in the US, for downed American spy plane pilot Francis Gary Powers.

Working under diplomatic cover, Drozdov served as the KGB resident in China from 19641968, and in the United States from 1975-1979.

The SVR praised Drozdov as a “real Russian officer, a warm-hearted person and a wise leader”.