Their parents posed as Argentinian citizens, and Vladimir Putin greeted the children in Spanish. According to the Kremlin, they did not speak Russian nor did they know who Putin was.

Their parents posed as Argentinian citizens, and Vladimir Putin greeted the children in Spanish. According to the Kremlin, they did not speak Russian nor did they know who Putin was.

Why did Russian President Vladimir Putin greet the children of just-freed Russian spies in Spanish?

The reason is straight out of an episode of the hit TV spy show “The Americans.”

Among the first prisoners stepping off the plane to greet President Putin was a slender brown-haired woman grasping the hand of her young daughter. She appeared to stifle a sob as she hugged Putin. He handed her a bouquet of purple and white flowers, and another to her daughter. Putin also hugged her husband and kissed their son.

Then, over the din of the airplane, Putin could be heard greeting the children with “buenas noches” — the Spanish phrase for “good evening.”

Their parents were undercover Russian spies who posed as Argentinian citizens living in Slovenia and went by the names Ludwig Gisch and Maria Rosa Mayer Muños. They were part of Thursday’s massive prisoner swap involving several countries.

    • merc@sh.itjust.works
      2·
      4 months ago

      The funny thing is that The Americans was actually based on a similar case from 2010. In that case the kids were 16 and 20 when they found out their parents were spies.

    • circuscritic@lemmy.ca
      2·
      4 months ago

      Because Russia is hands down the best operator of these types of human intelligence networks.

      Not because they’re just smarter than everyone else, or have some genetic predisposition to being better, but because they’ve had to mass-produce people with this exact skill set to maintain their own empire for over a hundred years.

      What we think of as Russia, is really mostly Slavic Muscovites who have stitched together the largest continuous empire on Earth and spanning many different ethnicities and races who didn’t join by choice, but by being conquered.

      It just so happens that the tradecraft and skills required for maintaining their large and diverse empire are pretty much the same ones necessary for this type of deep cover foreign espionage.