Sleeper agents tell Russian TV about living under cover

Two sleeper agents returned to Russia in a prisoner exchange have spoken to state television about breaking the news to their Spanish-speaking children that they were in fact Russian.

Artyom Dultsev and Anna Dultseva, a married couple who spent years posing as Argentine expats in Slovenia while acting as “illegals”, returned to Russia to a hero’s welcome last week, with their two children, Sofiya, 11, and Daniil, 9.

Such spies live abroad long-term under assumed identities. In 2010, a similar couple returned to Russia in a prisoner swap after bringing up their sons as Canadians.

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In their first interview since the exchange, which returned at least four Russian agents, the Dultsevs talked to Rossiya television channel at a foreign intelligence facility.

The Dultsevs were convicted in Slovenia last month for spying.

“We told the children that we are Russian, that they are Russian, that we are the Dultsevs” Dultseva said, smiling, recalling the conversation on the plane from Ankara.

Her husband said their daughter “had emotions, she started crying a little bit.”

Their son “reacted more calmly to this but very positively” he added.

Dressed in pink shirt and dark jeans, the couple walked hand in hand with their children, who had been placed in foster care after their arrest in December 2022.

Dultseva was shown praising her children in Spanish — “muy bien” — as they said their first phrases in Russian.

She said she had found it hard to speak Russian again.

“You don’t think in the language (Russian) — you are controlling yourself all the time and when we arrived we realised we couldn’t speak,” she said.

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Russia, whose president is a former KGB agent, has praised the couple’s dedication.

“They are high-class specialists — such people give their whole life to serving the motherland and make sacrifices a normal person can’t understand,” the interview’s voiceover said.

“The Dultsevs brought up their children as Spanish-speaking Catholics.. Now they are about to find out what borscht is.”

The interviewer gave the children a toy Cheburashka, a Soviet-era children’s character.

Russian President Vladimir Putin hugged Dultseva, who wept as she stepped onto Russian soil Thursday.

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“When I saw the honour guard out of the window of the plane, I started crying and Sofiya said: ‘This is the first time I’ve seen you crying,'” she said.

Dultseva said she felt “huge gratitude to our country, huge gratitude to Vladimir Vladimirovich (Putin).”

While in prison, “we didn’t doubt for a moment that the country remembered us, that Russia and the (secret) service were behind us,” Dultsev said.

Dultsev is from the Russian region of Bashkortostan and Dultseva is from the city of Nizhny Novgorod, Russian TV reported.

Dultseva vowed they would continue working “to serve Russia”.

© Agence France-Presse