Russian Sleeper Agents Reveal True Identities to Children During Flight Home
MOSCOW: In a dramatic turn of events, a family of Russian sleeper agents, part of the largest East-West prisoner swap since the Cold War, discovered their true identities only after boarding a flight to Moscow. The Kremlin revealed on Friday that the agents’ children learned they were Russian only once the plane was airborne.
“Before that, they didn’t know they were Russian or had any connection to our country,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. He added that when the children disembarked, it was evident they did not speak Russian, as President Vladimir Putin greeted them in Spanish with “buenas noches.”
Providing new insights into the swap, Peskov confirmed that Vadim Krasikov, a hitman released by Germany, was an employee of Russia’s FSB security service and had served in the elite Alpha Group. Krasikov had been convicted by a German court for assassinating a former Chechen militant in a Berlin park in 2019. Putin warmly hugged Krasikov upon his arrival in Moscow, highlighting his significance to the Russian state.
Krasikov, donning a baseball cap and tracksuit top, was the first to meet Putin on the tarmac, underscoring his importance to Moscow, which takes pride in repatriating its intelligence operatives detained abroad.
Among those released were the Dultsevs, a husband and wife team of sleeper agents convicted in Slovenia for masquerading as Argentinians to conduct espionage. They were flown back to Russia with their two children. Peskov mentioned that the couple had limited contact with their children while imprisoned, and feared losing their parental rights.
“The children asked their parents yesterday who it was that was meeting them (in Moscow). They didn’t even know who Putin was. This is how the ‘illegals’ work. They make such sacrifices out of dedication to their work,” Peskov explained.
Peskov stated that Russian agencies are working to secure the release of other Russians detained abroad. He confirmed that the recent exchange, negotiated by the FSB and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, involved 24 prisoners—16 moving from Russia to the West and eight from the West to Russia. Among those released by Moscow were U.S. journalist Evan Gershkovich and Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza, who also holds British citizenship.
Despite releasing more prisoners than it received, Russian authorities framed the exchange as a significant victory. This sentiment resonated positively with the public in Moscow.
“I am not remotely political, but any way you look at it: any exchange is wonderful, that our Russian comrades returned to the motherland,” commented Zulfia, a local resident interviewed in the city center.
Andrei Lugovoi, a former spy wanted by Britain for the murder of dissident Alexander Litvinenko using atomic poison, and now head of an ultranationalist party’s faction in the Russian Duma, expressed on Telegram: “Our people are at home with their families. And for each of them, it is no pity to hand over a bunch of foreign agent scum.”
When asked if the prisoner swap indicated Russia’s willingness to negotiate a compromise on Ukraine, Peskov clarified that the situations were distinct and that efforts for a diplomatic solution to the conflict, referred to by Russia as its “special military operation,” were ongoing under different principles.
