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Russian sleeper agents open up about secret trip to 2018 World Cup

The married couple, Artyom Dultsev and Anna Dultseva, returned home as a result of an exchange

Artyom Dultsev and Anna Dultseva Mikhail Voskresenskiy/POOL/TASS

Artyom Dultsev and Anna Dultseva

© Mikhail Voskresenskiy/POOL/TASS

MOSCOW, December 10. /TASS/. Artyom Dultsev and Anna Dultseva, sleeper agents who were returned to Russia in a prisoner exchange, say they made a secret visit to their motherland in 2018 during the FIFA World Cup.

"We came to Russia a couple of times, but this was not easy to organize, as you can imagine," Artyom Dultsev said in an interview with Razvedchik magazine. "In the summer of 2018, when Russia was holding the FIFA World Cup. We seized the opportunity and came [to Russia] as foreigners. We attended a couple of games, including one in Anna’s home city, Nizhny Novgorod, where we watched Argentina play Croatia."

He added that at the time the city was full of Argentinian football fans, and he and his wife sat among them during the game. "Very unusual, I must say. We were home but alien [to everyone present]," the agent shared. "By the way, Argentina lost that game, which made Sofia (Dultsevs’ daughter) sad; she even cried a bit."

According to Anna Dultseva, the couple also used this opportunity to set up a meeting with their relatives. "It was at my parents’ country house; both sides of the family came. Naturally, the children didn’t understand a thing: that we were in the countryside and that the people in front of them were their grandparents. They were still too young and didn’t ask any questions," she explained. "Still, we decided that a trip to Nizhny would be important for them. They will remember it and it will help them adapt when they return."

The married couple, Artyom Dultsev and Anna Dultseva, returned home as a result of an exchange. The family arrived in Slovenia on Argentine passports in 2017. There they established an IT company and an online gallery. After the start of the special operation in Ukraine in 2022, intelligence agents from an unspecified country recommended that Ljubljana pay close attention to the family. The couple was arrested and their two children, a boy and a girl, were placed in foster care. Investigators argued that they were deep cover agents of Russia’s foreign intelligence service. The couple pleaded guilty. On July 31, 2024, a court in Ljubljana sentenced them to one year and seven months in prison for espionage. They had already spent roughly this period of time in custody.

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