While in prison, Artem Viktorovich Dultsev and Anna Valerevna Dultseva were posing as an Argentine couple living in Slovenia. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the children did not speak a word of Russian, did not know Russian President Vladimir Putin and asked their parents who greeted them when they arrived in Moscow. The children were greeted by Putin in Moscow.
PRISON EXCHANGE IN ANKARA!
On Thursday, 24 prisoners from seven different countries were exchanged.
Sixteen were Western detainees in Russian prisons and eight were Russian detainees in the United States, Norway, Germany, Poland and Slovenia. Among them was Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.
The Russian family of four was warmly welcomed by Putin upon their arrival in Moscow, who gave Dultseva and her daughter flowers and hugged them.
Putin greeted the children of spies with the words “good night” in Spanish.
According to the Argentine press, the couple were known as María Mayer and Ludwig Gisch and traveled to Slovenia with Argentine passports in 2017.
Under their pseudonyms, Ludwig Gisch founded an IT company and María Mayer founded an online art gallery.
While the couple was living in Ljubljana, they were arrested on espionage charges in 2022.
On Wednesday, ahead of the prisoner swap, Dultsev and Dultseva were each sentenced to 19 months in prison after pleading guilty to espionage charges.
However, they were released after being detained since 2022, with time served in prison taken into account, and were asked to leave Slovenia, the Associated Press reported.
The family was sent back to Russia on Thursday as part of a Western-Russian prisoner swap.
The Kremlin said that 11-year-old Sofia and 8-year-old Gabriel, who were born in Argentina, only learned they were Russian when the plane took off from Ankara to Vnukovo Airport and that their lives would be different from then on.