INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Two sleeper agents who returned to Russia as part of last week's historic prisoner exchange spoke to state television about breaking the
news to their Spanish-speaking children that they were Russian.Artyom Dultsev and Anna Dultseva, a married couple who spent years posing as
Argentine expats in Slovenia while acting as "illegals," returned to Russia to a hero's welcome last week, with their two children, Sofiya,
11, and Daniil, 9.Spies like them live abroad long-term under assumed identities
In 2010, a similar couple returned to Russia in a prisoner swap after bringing up their sons as Canadians.In their first interview since the
exchange, the Dultsevs, who were sentenced to prison in Slovenia last month for spying, talked to the Rossiya television channel at a
on the plane from Ankara.Her husband said their daughter "had emotions, she started crying a little bit." Their son "reacted more calmly to
this but very positively," he added.Dressed in a pink shirt and dark jeans, the couple walked hand in hand with their children, who had been
their first phrases in Russian
when we arrived we realized we couldn't speak," Dultseva said.A voiceover in the state television interview described the couple as
"high-class specialists.""Such people give their whole life to serving the motherland and make sacrifices a normal person can't understand,"
"The Dultsevs brought up their children as Spanish-speaking Catholics..
Now they are about to find out what borscht is."Upon the couple's return to Russia, President Vladimir Putin hugged Dultseva, who wept as
she stepped onto Russian soil Thursday."When I saw the honor guard out of the window of the plane, I started crying and Sofiya said: 'This
is the first time I've seen you crying,'" Dultseva said.She added that she felt "huge gratitude to our country, huge gratitude to Vladimir
Vladimirovich [Putin]."While in prison, "we didn't doubt for a moment that the country remembered us, that Russia and the [secret] service
were behind us," Dultsev said.His wife vowed they would continue working "to serve Russia."
