A pair of deep-cover agents, Artem and Anna Dultsev, are among the spies who returned to Moscow on Thursday. According to the official “legend,” they were an Argentine family that had moved to Europe. Their children had just learned they were Russians. “They didn't even know who Putin was,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed on Friday that Artem and Anna Dultsev are intelligence officers, so-called illegals, or sleeper spies.
– Their children learned they were Russians only after the plane took off. Before that, they didn't know they were Russians, Peskov said.
The children, a boy and a girl, do not know Russian. Putin greeted them in Spanish.
Putin greeted his spies at the airportKIRILL ZYKOV/PAP/EPA
Peskov said that the children “didn't even know who Putin was.” In his opinion, this shows how much “sacrifice” illegals decide to make in their work for the country.
Who is an illegal?
An illegal, as the Intelligence Agency explained on Facebook, is “a cadre intelligence employee operating in deep conspiracy conditions on the territory of a foreign country, outside the official structures of his country's representations.”
An illegal has no contact with an official resident, has a fictitious biography and usually citizenship of another country.
They lived under false identities in Argentina and Slovenia
The Dulcevs, as previously established by Western media, came to Poland as young people Argentinawhere they legalized themselves under false identities. Dulcew (who used the name Ludwig Gisch) pretended to be the son of an Argentinian woman, born in Namibia. His wife, Maria Munos, was supposed to be a Mexican born in GreeceAfter five years, the couple and their children moved to Sloveniawhere they lived as an “ordinary family” with extremely frequent travel around Europe and a huge amount of cash kept in the apartment (this was determined by investigators).
The couple was arrested in Slovenia in 2022. On the last day of July this year, a Slovenian court sentenced them to 19 months in prison for espionage (they had their pretrial detention credited towards their sentence). On August 1, they were among the Kremlin spies and agents exchanged for political prisoners..
Children of sleeping spies learned on Thursday that they are RussiansPAP/EPA/MIKHAIL VOSKRESENSKIY/SPUTNIK/KREMLIN POOL
Peskov said that while the parents were in prison, they rarely had the opportunity to meet with their children, who were in foster care, and “they were afraid that they might be deprived of parental rights.” According to media reports, no relatives came forward about the children, because such actions would have risked exposure.
Main image source: PAP/EPA/MIKHAIL VOSKRESENSKIY/SPUTNIK/KREMLIN POOL