Members of Russia's Federal Security Service, or FSB, and sleeper agents living abroad were among those freed in a multinational prisoner swap on Thursday. The children of deep-cover agents posing as Argentinian expats in Slovenia were not even aware of their Russian heritage until they were transported to Moscow along with their parents, who were jailed for espionage in 2022.
New details emerged Friday on the largest prisoner swap since the Cold War, with the Kremlin acknowledging for the first time that some of the Russians held in the West were from its security services.
Journalists Evan Gershkovich and Alsu Kurmasheva as well as former Marine Paul Whelan were greeted by their families, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in Maryland late on Thursday.
At Moscow's Vnukovo Airport, meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin embraced each of the Russian returnees and promised them state generosity and discussions about their "future".
Among the eight returning to Moscow was Vadim Krasikov, a Russian assassin who was serving a life sentence in Germany for the 2019 brazen daytime killing of a former Chechen fighter in a Berlin park. German judges said the murder was carried out on orders from Russian authorities.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Friday that Krasikov is an officer of the Federal Security Service, or FSB – a fact reported in the West even as Moscow denied any state involvement.
He also said Krasikov once served in the FSB’s special Alpha unit, along with some of Putin's bodyguards.
“Naturally, they also greeted each other yesterday when they saw each other,” Peskov said, underscoring Putin's high interest in including Kresikov in the swap.
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The children 'didn't even know that they were Russian'
Peskov also confirmed that the couple released in Slovenia – Artem Dultsov and Anna Dultsova – were undercover intelligence officers commonly known as “illegals”. Posing as Argentine expats, they had used Ljubljana as their base since 2017 to relay Moscow's orders to other sleeper agents. They were arrested on espionage charges in 2022.
Peskov said that while the couple was in prison they were given only restricted access to their two children and had feared they would lose their parental rights. Their children joined them upon their release, flying to Moscow via Ankara, where the mass exchange took place.
But they apparently knew nothing of their parents' occupation or of their Russian roots.
"Before that, they didn't know that they were Russian and that they had anything to do with our country," Peskov said.
"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'."
The children were even unaware of who Putin was, Peskov said, and had asked who was greeting them.
“That’s how illegals work. That is the sacrifice they make because of their dedication to their work,” he said.
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A momentous trade
More than two dozen prisoners were freed in the historic trade, which was in the works for months and unfolded despite relations between Washington and Moscow being at their lowest point since the Cold War after Putin’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Moscow freed 15 people in the exchange – Americans, Germans and Russian dissidents – most of whom have been jailed on charges widely seen as politically motivated. Another German national was released by Belarus.
Among the dissidents released was Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Kremlin critic and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer serving 25 years on charges of treason widely seen as politically motivated. Associates of late opposition leader Alexei Navalny were also freed as were Oleg Orlov, a veteran human rights campaigner, and Ilya Yashin, imprisoned for criticising the war in Ukraine.
They were flown to Germany amid an outpouring of joy from their supporters and relatives – but also some shock and surprise.
“God, it is such happiness! I cried so much when I found out. And later, too. And I'm about to cry again now, as well,” said Tatyana Usmanova, the wife of Andrei Pivovarov, another opposition activist released in the swap, writing on Facebook as she flew to meet him. Pivovarov was arrested in 2021 and sentenced to four years in prison.
In a phone call with Biden, Kara-Murza said “no word is strong enough for this".
“I don’t believe what’s happening. I still think I’m sleeping in my prison cell in [the Siberian city of] Omsk instead of hearing your voice. But I just want you to know that you’ve done a wonderful thing by saving so many people,” he said in a video posted on X.
