Russian spies’ kids learn true identities on plane to Moscow, greeted by Putin in Spanish: ‘Buenas noches’

The children of deep-cover Russian sleeper agents, who were part of the biggest East-West prisoner swap since the Cold War, learned of their true nationality only after their flight took off for Moscow, the Kremlin revealed on Friday.

“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.

Photos released after they landed in Moscow showed them being greeted by Russian President Vladimir Putin along with the other freed Russian nationals.

“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’.”

Artem and Anna Dultsev, who operated under the aliases Ludwig Gisch and Maria Rosa Mayer Muños, had lived in Slovenia since 2017, running a startup IT company and an online art gallery. Posing as Argentine expats, Dultsevs used the Slovenian capital as their base to relay Moscow’s orders to other sleeper agents.

They were arrested on espionage charges in 2022 and had vehemently denied these allegations until suddenly changing their narrative on Wednesday.

Their two teenage children, who had been living in foster care since their parents’ arrest, were on a CIA-operated flight that transported them from Ljubljana to Ankara, where the exchange occurred.

Peskov said that while the couple were being held in jail they were given only restricted access to their children, and feared they could lose their parental rights.

“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,” Peskov said.

The prisoner exchange involved 24 individuals, with 16 moving from Russia to the West and eight from the West to Russia. Among those released by Moscow were U.S. journalist Evan Gershkovich and Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza, who holds British citizenship.