When the detained couple, Maria Mayer Muños and Ludwig Gisch, were led onto a plane in Slovenia last summer, they appealed to their guards: Please, don't address us by our real names in front of the children.
The couple's two children had grown up in Slovenia, believing they had Argentine parents. During the flight, they were told, in Spanish, that they were Russians and that Mom and Dad were actually named Anna Dultseva and Artiom Dultsev.
When the family landed in Moscow, they were received as heroes by President Vladimir Putin.
Ordinary suburban life
The Dultsev family was part of a historically large prisoner exchange between Russia and Western countries. The spy couple had led an apparently ordinary life in a suburb of Ljubljana, where the woman ran a gallery and the man started an IT company. But their entire life, including their marriage, had been arranged by the Russian intelligence service more than ten years earlier.
They were "sleeping" agents – infiltrating other countries by building civilian lives with false identities – and follow a series of revelations over the past 15 years.
In several cases, it has been married couples living quiet family lives. In the USA, three such couples were exposed in 2010. All had children, which was considered good for their cover, but raised suspicions that the children were being raised for future missions.
Couples in new relationships
In recent years, Russia is believed to have placed greater emphasis on the "sleeping" spies, but more have also been exposed.
One was a political science student at several prestigious universities and was to do an internship at the International Criminal Court (ICC). One was a guest researcher at the University of Tromsø in Norway. One was a jewelry designer and socialized in NATO circles in Italy.
Two spies were a married couple in Russia, but worked on different continents. The man lived in Brazil and the woman in Greece, where they built new careers and romantic relationships over several years. In early 2023, they were warned that they risked being exposed – and disappeared.
Presented as happy
It is unclear whether the double lives yield the desired results, but in Russian propaganda media, they are presented as exemplary sacrifices for the motherland.
In TV clips, the Dultsev family walks hand in hand in a blooming park environment, wearing matching colored shirts.
I love my big family, says eight-year-old Daniel in broken Russian.
His mother praises in Spanish: "Muy bien!"
"Tracey Ann Foley" and "Donald Heathfield"
Had Canadian passports and lived outside Boston in the USA with two sons when they were arrested in 2010. They became part of a larger prisoner exchange with Russia, as one of several spy couples. Andrej Bezrukov and Jelena Vavilova, as they are named, later inspired the TV series "The Americans". The sons, who were 16 and 20 when their parents were arrested, claimed they knew nothing.
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"José Assis Giammaria"
GRU Colonel Michail Mikusjin posed as a Brazilian and was a guest researcher on hybrid threats at Norway's Arctic University in Tromsø when he was arrested in the fall of 2022. He had previously been in Canada, where he studied and volunteered for political campaigns.
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"Victor Müller Ferreira"
GRU agent Sergej Tjerkasov studied political science at, among others, Johns Hopkins University in the USA and Trinity College in Ireland. Built a false identity over more than ten years, with a Brazilian passport. Arrested in the spring of 2022 in the Netherlands when he was to do an internship at the ICC in The Hague. Is imprisoned in Brazil.
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"Gerhard Daniel Campos Wittich" and "Maria Tsalla"
The couple is said to be married and named Sjmyrev, but they were on long-term missions on opposite sides. The man was in Brazil for at least two years, posing as Brazilian and Austrian, and had a girlfriend there. The woman lived in Athens, where she had a boyfriend and a Mexican passport. The two suddenly disappeared in early 2023, according to Greek authorities, as they risked being exposed.
