The Prisoner Exchange
A couple, each holding a child by the hand, descends from the official plane that landed at Vnukovo Airport in Moscow on the night of Thursday, August 1st. President Vladimir Putin stands at the bottom of the gangway, holding a huge bouquet of flowers. He embraces the woman, who can’t hold back her tears, pats her back, and kisses her shoulder. To the 12-year-old girl and her 9-year-old brother, who seem unaware of the situation, he unexpectedly says, “Buenas noches.” This public display of compassion by the Kremlin leader is unprecedented, even surpassing his reactions to victims of terrorism in Russia. Behind Russian President, the rigid presidential guard adds to the solemnity of the moment, captured by Russian television cameras.
The Released Prisoners
The largest prisoner exchange since the fall of the USSR in 1991 has just been completed between Russia and the West. Russia secures the release of eight Russians detained in various countries, including fraudsters, criminals, and spies, in exchange for the liberation of sixteen Russian and dual-citizen political prisoners opposed to the war. One of these individuals, Vadim Krassikov, also known as Vadim Sokolov, who was serving a life sentence in Germany for the 2019 assassination in Berlin of a Georgian who had fought alongside Chechen separatists, was the first to exit the plane. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov proudly stated that Krassikov had served in “Alfa,” an elite intelligence unit of the FSB, the Russian security services, and had served alongside several current presidential security service employees. However, the most significant individuals in the exchange were the couple – illegal operatives, deep-cover spies, and heroes in the eyes of Vladimir Putin.
The Undercover Spies
Arrested in December 2022 in Ljubljana, the Slovenian capital, where they had been living since 2017, Artiom Doultsev and Anna Doultseva had assumed complete cover identities as Argentine nationals. She, going by the name of Maria Rosa Mayer Munos, a Greek-born woman with a passport valid until 2032, operated an online art gallery. He, Ludwig Gisch, born in 1984, managed a technology start-up. During the investigation at their pastel-colored home in Ljubljana, authorities discovered computers with a system enabling communication with the “Center,” a term for Moscow in Russian espionage jargon, so well encrypted that neither Slovenian nor American technicians could crack it, according to The Wall Street Journal in June. Additionally, the American newspaper reported that in a hidden compartment in their refrigerator, the couple kept hundreds of thousands of euros in cash.
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