A family of Russian agents flown to Moscow in the biggest prisoner swap since the end of the Cold War were so undercover agents that their children only discovered they were Russian after the plane took off, the Kremlin said.
“Before that, they did not know that they were Russians and that they had something to do with our country,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
“And you probably saw when the children got off the plane stairs that they don’t speak Russian and that Putin greeted them speaking in Spanish. He said “buenas noches”.
Giving new details about the exchange and those released, Peskov confirmed that Vadim Kraskov, an executioner freed by Germany, was an employee of the Russian FSB security service and had served in Alpha, a special forces unit of the FSB.
Krasikov was convicted by a German court of killing a Chechen ex-combatant in a Berlin park in 2019. President Vladimir Putin hugged him after he got off a plane in Moscow on Thursday night.
Krasikov, wearing a baseball cap and tracksuit top, was the first of the returnees to step off the plane and meet Putin, underscoring his importance to Moscow, which prides itself on bringing back agents of the intelligence services arrested abroad.
Among those released were so-called “illegal” sleeper agents (agents placed in a country or organization not to undertake an immediate mission) – Dulcev, an androgynous man who had been convicted by a court in Slovenia of posing as Argentines in order to to carry out espionage, and who flew back to Russia with their two children.
Peskov said that while the couple was in prison, they had limited access to their children, and feared they would lose their parental rights.
“The children asked their parents yesterday who was going to meet 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.
Peskov said Russian government agencies were working to free other Russians abroad. The exchange was the result of negotiations between the FSB and the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), it said.
Putin’s decision to meet them on the tarmac of the airport was “a tribute to the people who serve their country and who after very difficult trials, and thanks to the hard work of many people, were able to return home,” Peskov said.
The exchange included 24 prisoners, 16 who were transferred from Russia to the West and eight who were held in the West and returned to Russia. Among those released by Moscow were American journalist Evan Gershkovich and Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza, who also has British citizenship.
Although Moscow released more prisoners than it took in, Russian authorities are describing the swap as a victory, and the news appears to be well received on the streets of Moscow.
“I’m not interested in politics at all, but no matter how we look at it: any exchange is amazing, that Russian comrades have returned to our homeland,” said Zulfia, who was answering a related question in the city center.
Andrei Lugovoi, a former spy wanted by Britain for the poisoning of dissident Alexander Litvinenko and now head of an ultra-nationalist party group in the State Duma (the Russian lower house) wrote on Telegram: “our people are at home with their families. And for each of them it’s no shame to hand over a bunch of foreign agent scum.”
Asked if the prisoner swap was a sign that Russia might be ready to reach a compromise deal on Ukraine, Peskov said those were different situations and that work on a possible diplomatic resolution of what Russia called ” special military operation” in Ukraine is carried out by “different authorities”.
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