Sleeper agents tell Russian TV about living undercover

MOSCOW – Two sleeper agents who 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.

Spies Artyom Dultsev and Anna Dultseva, a married couple who spent years posing as Argentinian expats in Slovenia while acting as “illegals”, returned to Russia to a heroes’ welcome last week

with their two children, Sofiya, 11, and Daniil, nine.

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

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 in July for spying.

“We told the children that we are Russian, that they are Russian, that we are the Dultsevs,” Mrs 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.

The couple walked hand in hand with their children, who had been placed in foster care after their arrest in December 2022.

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

She 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 it,” she said.

Russia, whose President Vladimir Putin 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 voice-over said.

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

Borscht is a sour soup common in East Europe.

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

Mr Putin hugged Mrs Dultseva, who wept as she stepped onto Russian soil on Aug 1.

“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 recalled.

Mrs 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”, Mr Dultsev said.

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

Mrs Dultseva vowed to continue working “to serve Russia”. AFP