Kremlin acknowledges intelligence operatives among the Russians who were freed in swap

New details emerged Friday on the largest prisoner swap since the Cold War, with the Kremlin acknowledging for the first time that some of the Russians held in the West were from its security services. Families of freed dissidents, meanwhile, expressed their joy at the surprise release.

While journalists Evan Gershkovich and Alsu Kurmasheva and former Marine Paul Whelan were greeted by their families and President Joe Biden in Maryland on Thursday night, President Vladimir Putin embraced each of the Russian returnees at Moscow's Vnukovo Airport, and promised them state awards and a “talk about your future.”

Among the eight returning to Moscow was Vadim Krasikov, a Russian assassin who was serving a life sentence in Germany for the 2019 killing of a former Chechen fighter in a Berlin park. German judges said the murder was carried out on orders from Russian authorities.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Friday that Krasikov is an officer of the Federal Security Service, or FSB — a fact reported in the West even as Moscow denied any state involvement.

He also said Krasikov once served in the FSB’s special Alpha unit, along with some of Putin's bodyguards.

“Naturally, they also greeted each other yesterday when they saw each other,” Peskov said, underscoring Putin's high interest in including Kresikov in the swap.

Peskov also confirmed that the couple released in Slovenia — Artem Dultsov and Anna Dultsova — were undercover intelligence officers commonly known as “illegals.” Posing as Argentine expats, they used Ljubljana as their base since 2017 to relay Moscow's orders to other sleeper agents and were arrested on espionage charges in 2022.

Their two children joined them as they flew to Moscow via Ankara,