The children of Russian sleeper agents, who took part in the largest East-West prisoner exchange since the Cold War, learned their true nationalities after their flight to Moscow took off, the Kremlin revealed on Friday.
“Before this, they knew that they were Russians and that they had something to do with our country,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
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Photos released after landing in Moscow showed them being greeted by Russian President Vladimir Putin along with freed Russian citizens.
“And you saw that when the young people came down the stairs of the plane, they did not speak Russian and Putin greeted them in Spanish. He told them ‘good evening. ‘
Artem and Anna Dultsev, who used the pseudonyms Ludwig Gisch and Maria Rosa Mayer Muños, had been living in Slovenia since 2017, running a new IT company and an online art gallery. Posing as Argentine expatriates, the Dultsevs used the Slovenian capital as their place of residence. basis for transmitting orders from Moscow to other sleeper agents.
They were arrested for espionage in 2022 and vehemently denied the allegations until they changed their speech on Wednesday.
Their two teenage children, who had been living in foster care since their parents’ arrest, were on a CIA-operated flight that transported them from Ljubljana to Ankara, where the exchange occurred.
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Peskov said that while detained, the couple had limited themselves to their children and feared squandering their parental rights.
“The young people asked their parents who would meet them (in Moscow). They make such sacrifices out of determination in their work,” Peskov said.
The prisoner exchange affected 24 people, 16 of whom were moving from Russia to the West and 8 from the West to Russia. Among those released through Moscow were American journalist Evan Gershkovich and Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza, a British citizen.