INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
The Kremlin on Friday confirmed that Vadim Krasikov, freed by Germany in Thursday's prisoner swap deal with the West, is an operative with
Russia's FSB security service.Moscow also said that the children of an undercover spy couple released by Slovenia did not even know they
were Russian until they boarded the plane back to Moscow."Krasikov is an FSB employee," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on
Friday, adding that he served in the agency's elite and secretive "Alpha" unit.Peskov also said that Krasikov "served with some of the
people working in the president's security detail."Krasikov was serving a life sentence in Germany for the murder of a Chechen rebel
Bellingcat had previously found Krasikov had links to Russia's FSB, though Friday's admission was the first time Moscow has publicly
Slovenia were also spies.Artem Dultsev and Anna Dultseva, whose two children were also sent to Russia in the deal, had been posing as an
Argentine couple that ran an IT business and art gallery in Ljubljana."The children of the illegals who arrived yesterday only found out
they were Russian on the plane from Ankara
Moscow."Illegals" is a term used to refer to Russian undercover spies who live in foreign countries for years, or even decades, under fake
prisoner exchange that saw Moscow release U.S
citizens Evan Gershkovich, Paul Whelan and Alsu Kurmasheva, along with a host of Russian dissidents and activists.
