Exchanged Sleeper Agents' Kids Didn’t Know They Were Russian

The eight Russian adults and two minors who were released as part of the Aug. 1 prisoner exchange were surprised to find a red carpet laid out for them and to be greeted in person by President Vladimir Putin at Moscow’s Vnukovo-2 government terminal.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said at a press briefing on Friday the head of state wished to be there as “a tribute to the people who had served their country.”

If the group of Russian spies, assassins, hackers and insider traders who had been released was surprised, the children of Artem & Anna Dultsev, agents of Russia’s foreign intelligence service (SVR) who had posed as Argentinian nationals in Slovenia, were surely dumbfounded.

The husband using the name Ludwig Gisch ran a startup IT company while his wife, whose fake papers named her as Maria Rosa Mayer Muños, operated an online art gallery.

Peskov confirmed during today’s briefing that the Dultsev were “illegals” – agents working under deep-cover, trained to impersonate foreigners, and who spend years living abroad within their false identities.

He also seemed apparently delighted to tell reporters that the Dultsev’s two children “only learned that they were Russian after the plane took off [for Moscow] from Ankara. Before that, they didn’t know that they were Russian and that they had anything to do with our country.”

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Russian news agencies quoted Peskov adding, “When the children came down the plane – they don’t speak Russian – so the President greeted them in Spanish, saying ‘Buenas noches’ [good evening].”

Peskov then said “They had to ask asked their parents who was the guy who met them, they didn’t even know who the president was. But this is how ‘illegals’ must work and the sacrifices they make for the sake of their work, for the sake of dedication to their work.”

As the independent Russian news site The Insider reported, the Dultsev children were not the first offspring of illegal Russian intelligence officers to only learn about their true nationality after their parents were arrested. In 2010, 10 Russian intelligence officers were detained in the United States, some who had children.

Andrei Bezrukov, using the name Donald Heathfield, and his wife Elena Vavilova, known as Tracey Foley, both KGB sleeper agents were exchanged in Vienna. One of the Russian detainees for whom they were swapped was the former GRU colonel Sergei Skripal, who was poisoned with the Russian Novichok nerve agent along with his daughter Yulia in the UK in 2018.

Bezrukov’s sons Tim and Alex, who had been born in Canada were given Russian passports after the exchange and took their mother’s surname becoming Timofey and Alexander Vavilov. When they reached adulthood, however, they applied for and received Canadian citizenship and immediately left Russia.