Vladimir Putin arrived at Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport to welcome two of the Kremlin’s ‘sleeper agents’.
Anna Dultseva and Artem Dultsev were among the prisoners returned to Russia, in the largest East-West swap since the Cold War.
Their two children found out they were Russians only after their flight departed, indicating how deep under cover their parents were.
‘Before that, they didn’t know that they were Russian and that they had anything to do with our country,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
And you probably saw that when the children came down the plane’s steps that they don’t speak Russian and that Putin greeted them in Spanish.
‘He said “buenas noches”.’
As the Dultsevs are now finally unmasked, this is everything we know about the spies.
The Dultsevs were convicted in Slovenia of pretending to be Argentinians in order to spy for the Kremlin.
Posing as expats, they had used the capital, Ljubljana, as their base since 2017 to orders to other sleeper agents.
The couple were arrested on espionage charges in 2022.
Peskov said that while they were being held in jail they were given only restricted access to their children, a boy and a girl, and feared they could lose their parental rights.
The Dultsevs pleaded guilty to espionage on Wednesday and were sentenced to serve time in jail.
While living undercover in Slovenia, Dultsev posed as an IT businessman named Ludvig Gisch.
After pleading guilty, he was sentenced to more than a year and a half in prison, which the court said was equivalent to time spent.
He was set to be deported to Russia and was banned from entering Slovenia for five years.
Dultseva posed as an art dealer and gallery owner and went by the name Maria Rosa Mayer Munos. She was also set to be deported.
Before finally arriving in Moscow, their children did not even know who Putin was.
Peskov said: ‘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.’
The Russian president greeted the couple, kissing Dultseva on the cheek and then giving her and her daughter bouquets of flowers.
He then hugged her husband with a big smile gracing his face.
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