Yuri Sagaidak was born in 1950 in Alma-Ata (today Almaty), completed his secondary-school education in 1968, and graduated in 1972 from the FSB Academy (known until 1982 as The Dzerzhinsky Higher School of the KGB). In addition to acting as a journalist for the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, he worked for the foreign intelligence service of the USSR. He served first in Indonesia and then in the United Kingdom. In 1989, he was deported from the United Kingdom after being exposed and accused by the authorities of espionage. His expulsion was accompanied by a diplomatic scandal related to his attempt to recruit the UK Member of Parliament Lady Olga Maitland, who reported this to the Security Agency MI5. According to a local publication, Sagaydak was issued a temporary residence permit to live in Lithuania.