Children of Freed Sleeper Agents Learned They Were Russians on the Flight, Kremlin Says
August 2nd, 2024Via: Reuters:
A family of Russian sleeper agents flown to Moscow in the biggest East-West prisoner swap since the Cold War were so deep under cover that their children found out they were Russians only after the flight took off, the Kremlin said on Friday.
“Before that, they didn’t know that they were Russian and that they had anything to do with our country,” Kremlin spokesman 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’.”
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Among those released were the so-called “illegal” sleeper agents – the Dultsevs, a husband and wife convicted by a court in Slovenia of pretending to be Argentinians in order to spy, who were flown back to Russia with their two children.
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.
