The Life Of A Former Spy Comes Back To Haunt Him

Former KGB employee Mikhail Lennikov takes refuge in the First Lutheran Church in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Darryl Dyck / Associated Press

Former KGB Spy's Past Threatens His Life As A Canadian -- L.A. Times

Mikhail Lennikov is on the brink of deportation to Russia over a Canadian law barring residency to onetime employees of antidemocratic spy agencies. Canadians have rallied to his defense.

Reporting from Vancouver, Canada -- For the last 12 years, Mikhail and Irina Lennikov have lived unremarkable lives, not unlike countless other immigrants who came to Canada from Eastern Europe looking for a fresh start in a prosperous and quiet land.

He found a job as a software developer. She got hired in an insurance office. Their son, Dmitri, who barely remembers Russia, graduated last month from Byrne Creek Secondary School in the comfortable suburb of Burnaby.

Read more ....

My Comment: Many of my father's World War 2 Russian war buddies were in military intelligence and some (I can only presume with about 99% certainty) in the NKVD (which became the KGB later).

They were the most anti-communist group of men that I have ever met. They got their Canadian citizenship .... but in today's world, these men (my father included) would probably be deported.

Sighhhh .... we are repeating history again.

At the end of the Second World War, many Russians in Western Europe were forcibly deported back to the Soviet Union .... which in Stalin's world meant death. This is one of the reasons why my father came to Canada in the late 1940s .... it was to escape this type of death sentence.

Flashback to today .... treason is still punishable by death in Russia .... a fact that former KGB employee Mikhail Lennikov knows to well.