The Russian plane that landed in Moscow last week as part of the biggest prisoner exchange with the US since the Cold War carried "spies, assassins and criminals", but also two "wide-eyed and confused" children, said The Guardian.
Sofia, 11, and Daniel, eight, were raised in a seemingly Argentinian family, completely unaware their parents were actually Russian and part of "an elaborate network of deep-cover sleeper spies". Their parents – real names Anna Dultseva and Artem Dultsev – are one of the most high-profile cases of Russian "illegals" since the collapse of the Soviet Union. What are 'illegals'? Most spies are "legals", working as diplomats in their country's foreign embassies while secretly gathering intelligence. "Illegals" are undercover agents who live under false identities – sometimes for decades, like the Dultsevs.
Marjan Miklavcic, the former head of Slovenia's military intelligence, told The New York Times that sleeper agents were often planted with "no clear mission": a "hidden reserve force" that could be activated in a crisis. That makes them Russia's "most prized assets", said The Guardian.
How are they trained? Illegals spend about six years training intensively to perfect their cover story, including mastering the language and mannerisms of their new nationality. It is an "expensive and detailed process", said Business Insider, and even so one detail is "almost impossible to eliminate": accents.
The Dultsevs reportedly spoke flawless Spanish. But Vladimir Guryev, arrested for espionage in 2010 while posing as "American" student Richard Murphy, "looked like Boris Yeltsin and had a heavy Russian accent", his teacher told The New York Times.
What now? Recent years have been "awful" for Russian "legals," said The Economist, with about 600 diplomats expelled from embassies across Europe since the invasion of Ukraine. Experts believe that Russia is "gearing up" its deep-cover programme as an alternative, said Business Insider, increasingly sourcing its fake identities from South America, where corruption is "rife" and the Kremlin can "count on the support of decades-old allies".
Putin, a former KGB foreign intelligence officer, has "thrown huge resources at this quite eccentric priority", said Calder Walton, director of research for the Intelligence Project at Harvard's Kennedy School. He has a "real fetish" for illegals, Walton told The New York Times. |