Inside the Hunt for Putin’s Sleeper Agents

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Journal - Episode "Inside the Hunt for Putin’s Sleeper Agents"

Release Date: March 28, 2025

Introduction

In the episode titled "Inside the Hunt for Putin’s Sleeper Agents," hosted by Kate Linebaugh, Ryan Knutson, and Jessica Mendoza, The Journal delves deep into the intricate world of Russian sleeper agents embedded within Western societies. This comprehensive investigation uncovers the elaborate methods employed by these spies, the painstaking efforts of international intelligence agencies to unmask them, and the geopolitical ramifications of their exposure and subsequent prisoner swaps.

The Moscow Arrival: A Facade Unveiled

On August 1, 2024, a seemingly ordinary Russian family, including a mother, father, and their children, arrived in Moscow under the guise of returning home through a prisoner swap. However, beneath their ordinary appearance lay an intricate web of deceit:

[00:06] Kate Linebaugh: "Among them are hackers, an assassin, an arms dealer, dangerous men with notorious pasts. But there's one group that stands out."

The family, Maria and Ludwig, appeared as a typical suburban couple, blending seamlessly into civilian life. Their unassuming demeanor masked a decade-long espionage mission, where they transmitted intelligence back to Moscow while maintaining perfect covers in Argentina and later, Slovenia.

The Art of Espionage: Crafting Identities

Maria and Ludwig exemplified the sophisticated tactics of Russian intelligence. Utilizing falsified identities and leveraging everyday professions, they established credible fronts:

[12:15] Kate Linebaugh: "Anna Dultseva, an elite officer in Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, became Maria Munoz, an Argentinian national."

Maria operated an art gallery, a perfect cover allowing frequent travel across Europe for exhibitions and covert meetings. Ludwig ran an IT firm, providing a plausible reason for their technical communications. Their lives were meticulously crafted to avoid suspicion, raising two children and integrating fully into their communities.

The Investigation: Unraveling the Deception

The breakthrough in uncovering the Dolcevs' true identities came through a combination of traditional investigative methods and serendipitous discoveries. Slovenian intelligence chief, Jo Kadivnik, received a cryptic tip from MI6 about the presence of Russian illegals in the country. The task was monumental:

[21:19] Jo Parkinson: "The head of MI6 is referred to as C... you've got to find them."

Despite the high-quality surveillance capabilities of Western intelligence, Maria and Ludwig operated with remarkable caution, utilizing old-school tradecraft like hiding messages under rocks in Slovenian forests. Their meticulous avoidance of digital footprints made them exceptionally difficult to detect.

The Arrest: Operation Execution

The Dolcevs' careful strategies eventually faltered during a family vacation to Russia in 2018, where they made a critical error by using Russian diplomatic passports. This mistake exposed their true identities to Slovenian intelligence, leading to a swift and coordinated raid:

[28:37] Jo Parkinson: "The Dulcevs are in their house. It's a Monday morning."

Special forces executed a precise operation, apprehending Maria and Ludwig without significant resistance. The discovery of high-tech surveillance equipment and large sums of money in their home confirmed their espionage activities.

Geopolitical Fallout: The Prisoner Swap

The arrest of the Dolcevs triggered immediate geopolitical tensions between Russia and the West. Moscow, in response, demanded the return of its detained spies, leading to a complex prisoner swap:

[31:48] Jo Parkinson: "'Why are you doing America's bidding?... Let's make a trade.'"

The negotiations culminated on August 1, 2024, marking the largest prisoner exchange since the Cold War. Sixteen individuals were released by Russia, including journalists and military personnel, in exchange for the Dolcevs and other operatives.

Aftermath and Implications: A New Era of Espionage

Post-swap, Maria and Ludwig were lauded as national heroes in Russia, embodying the state's glorification of espionage:

[36:13] Jo Parkinson: "They are state media's idea of a patriotic Russian family."

Their public persona serves as a strategic tool for Russia, potentially inspiring future generations and serving as a recruitment mechanism for intelligence services. The episode highlights the evolving nature of global espionage, where traditional methods intersect with modern geopolitical strategies.

Notable Quotes

• Kate Linebaugh [00:06]: "They were like ghosts in the back of your mind."

• Dan Hoffman [08:17]: "The illegals really mean something to Putin on a personal level."

• Jo Parkinson [21:34]: "MI6 either would not or could not tell Kadivnik names, only that the two Russians were hiding under deep cover as illegals."

• Drew Hinshaw [25:06]: "Maybe the trip came together at the last minute. They didn't have enough time to apply for a visa."

• Jo Parkinson [36:13]: "They are state media's idea of a patriotic Russian family."

Conclusion

"Inside the Hunt for Putin’s Sleeper Agents" provides a riveting exploration of modern espionage, illustrating the lengths to which nations will go to protect and advance their interests. Through exhaustive reporting and in-depth interviews, The Journal sheds light on the shadowy world of sleeper agents, the intricate dance of intelligence agencies, and the profound impact these covert operations have on international relations. For listeners seeking to understand the complexities of global spycraft and its implications for the future, this episode serves as an essential insight into the clandestine battles shaping our world.

Transcript

[Kate Linebaugh]

August 1, 2024. Moscow. It was dark by the time the flight arrived. In news footage, you see a Kremlin honor guard with ceremonial bayonets. The Russians coming home are part of a prisoner swap. Among them are hackers, an assassin, an arms dealer, dangerous men with notorious pasts. But there's one group that stands out.

[Drew Hinshaw]

They look like a study in a normal family. Next door.

[Jo Parkinson]

Yep, the first lady off the plane is a mom.

[Drew Hinshaw]

Yeah, she has mousy brown hairs. She's wearing a blue shirt open at the collar, jeans and plimp soles.

[Jo Parkinson]

And with her is an 11 year old girl.

[Kate Linebaugh]

That's our colleagues Jo Parkinson and Drew Hinshaw.

[Drew Hinshaw]

Her daughter has her hair up and wearing Harry Potter sneakers. This mom holding her daughter's hand is trailed by her husband and her son. They walk down the staircase towards this red carpet where the dictator of Russia, Vladimir Putin, is waiting and he has.

[Jo Parkinson]

A bouquet of flowers.

[Kate Linebaugh]

The camera shows Putin hugging the mousy woman. Then he greets the girl and her little brother. It's a little hard to hear Putin over the airplane.

[Jo Parkinson]

And Putin says to the girl, buenas noches. Buenas noches.

[Kate Linebaugh]

Why is he addressing this girl, Girl in Spanish?

[Jo Parkinson]

This girl, until really a few minutes before, thought her parents were Argentinian citizens. The truth is they were Russian spies who'd spent a decade more assembling an entirely fictitious life.

[Drew Hinshaw]

The children weren't told the truth about why their parents had been arrested.

[Jo Parkinson]

Of course, they didn't know that their parents spoke Russian. They didn't know. They didn't know anything about their parents, really.

[Kate Linebaugh]

For years, this family lived quietly, first in Argentina, then in the suburbs of Slovenia. The parents gave away nothing about themselves.

[Jo Parkinson]

Nothing. Nothing. They were like ghosts in the back of your mind. You're kind of like, who is this couple? What is. What's going on with this?

[Kate Linebaugh]

To answer those questions, Joe and Drew and a team of Wall Street Journal reporters worked across four continents. They spoke with more than 30 former and current officials in nine countries. They obtained hundreds of court documents and personal records. The Kremlin never responded to their questions. After months of reporting, our team untangled the truth about Russia's most famous family of spies and unspooled the story of. Of a global hunt. A hunt that hinged on lucky breaks, old school sleuthing and leaps of faith. How did they get caught?

[Jo Parkinson]

That's a long story.

[Kate Linebaugh]

Welcome to the Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Kate LINEBAUGH. It's Friday, March 28th. Coming up on the show Inside the Hunt for Putin's Sleeper Agents.

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[Kate Linebaugh]

June 14, 2013 Buenos Aires, Argentina when the patient arrives at the hospital, she's quiet, petite and clearly in late stage pregnancy. Medical staff end up running towards her.

[Jo Parkinson]

When she shows up, she's fully dilated. She's ready to give birth within the hour. And the doctor notices there's something a little bit weird.

[Kate Linebaugh]

The woman checks in and gives the name Maria rosa Maya. That's Dr. Mario Perez, the obstetrician who saw Maria. He's delivered thousands of babies, tens, I.

[Jo Parkinson]

Think 10,000 babies, and this one stuck out of his mind just because he thought there was something really unusual. And I couldn't put my finger on it at the time.

[Kate Linebaugh]

Dr. Perez jotted down some notes. Patient Maria was barely interacting with staff. She didn't seem to ask questions or have many requests. She delivered the baby quietly with no anesthesia.

[Jo Parkinson]

He notices at one point that she seems like really lonely. There's something about this woman that just doesn't seem spiritually well, the doctor says. In his words.

[Kate Linebaugh]

The couple names their baby girl Sophie, a natural born Argentine. Maria and her husband Ludwig speak to each other in hushed voices, cooing with the baby in fluent Spanish.

[Jo Parkinson]

And again, there's something weird. The doctor notices this couple. They're not facetiming or calling anybody. Like normally when someone gives birth, you've got visitors, well wishers, gifts even, who knows? Especially in Argentina, you'd have lines of relatives of all types coming to say hi. And no one's coming to say hi to this family.

[Kate Linebaugh]

A year later, Maria is pregnant again, this time with a son. And during this second delivery, the doctor again notes her composure.

[Jo Parkinson]

This is a woman with a high tolerance for pain.

[Drew Hinshaw]

She somehow manages in that moment of pain and Difficulty not to give away anything of her real identity. It is buried so deep.

[Kate Linebaugh]

Dr. Perez was witnessing the steely resolve of a master Russian spy. Maria's silence would be an important trait for years to come. For more than a decade, she and her husband kept lives so unassuming and so low key they could melt into the shadows of civilian. The couple was secretly sending intel back to Moscow, working under what the Americans call non official cover. The Kremlin has another name for it.

[Dan Hoffman]

They're called illegals.

[Kate Linebaugh]

That's dan Hoffman, the CIA's former station chief in Moscow.

[Dan Hoffman]

The illegals really mean something to Putin on a personal level. I would say with a high level of confidence that he would be briefed on the tactics and the status of these illegals on a fairly regular basis, say once a month, that he would be tracking it.

[Kate Linebaugh]

The illegals are intelligence operatives who work without official ties or protection from their government. Dan is one of the top guys who actually hunted down illegals during his time at the CIA. Illegals aren't conventional spies who might say, take a posting as a diplomat at an embassy. When those kinds of spies get caught, they just get sent back on a plane home. Diplomatic immunity keeps them out of jail. Russia has done things differently.

[Dan Hoffman]

They would send their intelligence officers overseas, principally to the west, the United States in particular, without any diplomatic backstopping. They would be posing as business people or academics. Very deep cover. The risk of doing that is you don't have diplomatic immunity. So if you get caught, you're going to jail. But the benefit is that it's super hard to find these people. It's like a needle in a stack of needles.

[Kate Linebaugh]

The illegals can yield valuable gains in a major coup for the Soviet Union in the 1950s, an undercover spy stole America's atomic secrets while living in Brooklyn.

[Drew Hinshaw]

Masquerading as an artist. He had a studio facing the U.S. attorney's office.

[Kate Linebaugh]

That illegal used a hollow nickel for coded messages meant for the Soviets. And this kind of spy activity would be mythologized in Russian pop culture.

[Dan Hoffman]

They had a very famous TV show in the 1970s, the Seventeen Moments of Spring. And the hero of this series was a guy named Stierlitz. It was a Russian illegal who had penetrated the Nazi inner circle. It's fictitious, but that's the lore of intelligence for the KGB. And when that TV show was airing in the 1970s, the Soviet citizens would stay home and watch it. The streets were empty because people were at home watching this TV show.

[Kate Linebaugh]

One of the viewers was a young Vladimir Putin. He was enthralled by the undercover super spy Stirlitz, the Soviet Union's answer to James Bond.

[Jo Parkinson]

Putin loved this stuff.

[Drew Hinshaw]

He was massively inspired as a young man by watching these shows.

[Kate Linebaugh]

That's Dru and Joe again.

[Drew Hinshaw]

And inspired enough that, you know, quite soon afterwards, he walked through the Leningrad office of the kgb, through the front door, and said, I speak German.

[Jo Parkinson]

Send me out there. Send me out there.

[Kate Linebaugh]

Putin wouldn't become an illegal, but he did manage deep cover agents abroad.

[Drew Hinshaw]

He has said that while he was in Dresden, part of what he did was working as an illegal support officer.

[Kate Linebaugh]

What does an illegal support officer do?

[Drew Hinshaw]

So that can be anything from passing messages or passing resources to helping to find the documents to create these fake identities for new illegals.

[Jo Parkinson]

They picked up the birth certificates of children who died in their first months of life and used those birth certificates of dead babies and toddlers to pick up passports from Greece or Mexico or anywhere in the world. And they started to live lives as those individuals.

[Kate Linebaugh]

That's exactly how the mousy woman with the quiet composure ended up assuming her new identity. Using doctored records from a dead infant from a small Greek village 30 years earlier, Anna Dultseva, an elite officer in Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, became Maria Munoz, an Argentinian national. The master spy would eventually reunite with her husband, her subordinate officer, a man born Artem Doltsev. Artem would later take the alias Ludwig.

[Jo Parkinson]

They were really married in Russia in the 2000s, but they got married again in Argentina to create the paper trail. Yeah, exactly.

[Kate Linebaugh]

And for this wedding, they needed witnesses. So they invited a couple, some of the few friends they seemed to make. A Colombian couple met Maria and Ludwig through their kids. They told the Journal about being invited as witnesses to the marriage. The Colombians later reflected that it was odd that they'd never met any of the couple's other relatives or friends. For years, Maria and Ludwig crafted identities as ordinary Argentines. Maria attended a public relations class, and neighbors saw Ludwig leave the house during office hours, often wearing a tie. They raised two children and only spoke Spanish at home. But by 2017, this phase of their mission was coming to a close. After establishing covers, the sleeper agents were about to become awakened for a broader mission, one that would take them into the heart of Europe.

[Jo Parkinson]

They get a new order from what's called the center, which is basically Moscow. It's time to go to Slovenia.

[Kate Linebaugh]

Why Slovenia?

[Jo Parkinson]

It's in the middle of Europe's passport free zone. So you can get in a car and drive all the way through Germany, France, Spain, Italy, wherever you want to go, and nobody's going to stop you. And look at your passport.

[Kate Linebaugh]

No passport checks. Easy travel. It was a tantalizing way for the Russians to advance their mission. Like having a key to a network of invisible pathways across dozens of European countries. The family moved into a modest pastel house on the outskirts of Slovenia's capital, Ljubljana. Did you talk with anybody who knew them?

[Jo Parkinson]

Yeah, we talked to their neighbors, all kinds of their people from their school, community, and I mean, Joe and I have been journalists for, I don't know, maybe 15 years or more at this point. And we're pretty used to showing up and doing what we call vox pops with the neighbors. Stuff happens, you go, hey, did you know this guy? And in my career, I've rarely met someone who just nobody remembered anything interesting about at all. Nothing.

[Kate Linebaugh]

In Slovenia, Maria and Ludwig had innocuous day jobs.

[Jo Parkinson]

Maria ran an art gallery. His story, he ran an IT firm. Again, very vague.

[Drew Hinshaw]

But when you start digging into the profile, you see there was method in all of these decisions.

[Kate Linebaugh]

How so?

[Drew Hinshaw]

An art gallery as a front is not only a place where it's easy to explain money coming in that can then move out through the accounts. It's also a place that gives you an easy cover for traveling around Europe to go and see exhibitions on the surface, where of course, you then have the ability to go and see other people without arousing suspicion.

[Kate Linebaugh]

And Maria traveled often. She flew to art fairs in London and Edinburgh. Her jet setting provided cover for meetings with contacts and recruiting future agents.

[Drew Hinshaw]

She was also doing some of this crazy, like, old school, cold war trade craft of spying. It was incredibly ornate and incredibly what you would think actually of, like old fashioned and anachronistic. But the people that we talk to, whose job it is to try and track this, say that this is the toughest stuff to unveil.

[Kate Linebaugh]

Maria would go to a forest in the south of Slovenia. There she would slip messages for her handlers under a designated rock.

[Jo Parkinson]

The US obviously has incredible ability to eavesdrop on our phones and emails and everything else, but leaving a rock in the woods of Slovenia, you know, how are we going to find that?

[Kate Linebaugh]

Maria's online gallery claimed to work with 90 artists around the world. The gallery's social media posted pictures from exhibitions across Europe. Her face is never shown. She is in one picture standing next to a stepladder and adjusting a painting on the wall. But it's her back to the camera. It turns out the true nature of her work was surveillance. Maria set up her Small office, just steps away from one of her marks. The director of a European Union energy regulatory agency. Russia wanted to know more about what the regulator was up to. So Maria started watching the director closely. Meanwhile, Ludwig had a startup registered in a nondescript building downtown. On his computer, there was hardware to communicate securely with Moscow. The family was private. They marked birthdays without inviting other children. They drove a simple Kia sedan and they tried to blend in.

[Drew Hinshaw]

They never got a parking ticket, let alone any kind of, you know, tax infraction. They always made sure they reported on time. There was nothing flash, nothing to draw attention to themselves.

[Kate Linebaugh]

The couple were model citizens, law abiding, quiet and careful. Until they weren't. Because over the years, Maria and Ludwig were starting to get bolder. They were starting to take some risks, including a family vacation.

[Drew Hinshaw]

Despite all the discipline and the layers of lies, that ultimately was the mistake that gave him away.

[Jo Parkinson]

Nobody's perfect. It's in real life, you know, spies are human beings, and that's what happened here.

[Kate Linebaugh]

That's after the break.

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[Kate Linebaugh]

Eduardo, the chief of Slovenia's spy agency, sits in an office framed by a metallic owl, the emblem for the country's intelligence agency, Sova. Sova means owl. The Slovenian director Jo Kadivnik cuts a commanding figure.

[Jo Parkinson]

He wears kind of silver neck chains and Armani scarves. And the joke is that he kind of dresses like the organized crime bosses that he normally investigates.

[Drew Hinshaw]

He has a lot of loyalty from his men. He needed that because the assignment he was about to take on no Slovenian spy chief had ever had to take on anything quite like that before.

[Kate Linebaugh]

The high stakes assignment came suddenly in early spring 2020. Two weeks earlier, Russia launched its ground invasion of Ukraine.

[Jo Parkinson]

Yosho Kadivnik gets a call. Would you please come to London? The head of MI6 wants to see you.

[Kate Linebaugh]

The Slovenian wondered what secret could be so sensitive that his British counterpart had to deliver it in person. Kadivnik flew to London, and what he learned at that meeting made his heart race.

[Jo Parkinson]

The head of MI6 is referred to as C. It's kind of his code name. It dates back to the foundations of the spy agency. And C tells his Slovenian counterpart, you've got some Russian spies in your country, and he passes along a tip. But this tip is incredibly vague.

[Kate Linebaugh]

MI6 either would not or could not tell Kadivnik names, only that the two Russians were hiding under deep cover as illegals.

[Drew Hinshaw]

It's the toughest thing you can do in counterintelligence work.

[Jo Parkinson]

Of all the foreigners in any given country, two of them are actually Russian spies, and you've got to find them.

[Kate Linebaugh]

In Kadivnik's world, this was as urgent and as complicated as it gets. British and American intelligence were now counting on his tiny team to find the illegals and arrest them. So he gets this monumental, impossible task. What does he do?

[Drew Hinshaw]

Because the secret is so potentially explosive, he can tell very few people. So to begin with, he only shares this with the Prime Minister and the National Security Advisor. And they have to formulate a team and a task force who themselves aren't even briefed on the full scope of what they're looking for. But they know they're looking for someone, so they have to start rifling through all of the data and the information and the travel records, you name it, of people that they think could be potentially suspicious.

[Kate Linebaugh]

What Khadivnik couldn't have known then was that his targets were operating right under his nose. Less than three miles from his office, the Dolcevs had been careful. Neighbors saw a quiet Argentinian family. Nothing much to see. But their cover began to unravel when the family went on vacation.

[Jo Parkinson]

Argentina bedraggled, ragged, desperate, and with real, real work to do. Croatia's dream. They did take a trip to Russia in 2018 to see Argentina play the World Cup.

[Kate Linebaugh]

For the Dalt Sevs, it would be the perfect cover. Russia was hosting the World Cup. The family could blend in with a crush of other tourists. They were, after all, just a family of Argentinian football fans. And as fate would have it, the match was being Played in Maria's real hometown.

[Drew Hinshaw]

Could you believe it? She could go and watch Argentina wearing an Argentine shirt and then be in the same hometown where she'd grown up.

[Jo Parkinson]

That was a trip for the mom to let the family meet their kids, you know, the grandparents, without the kids ever kind of picking up on what was really going on.

[Kate Linebaugh]

But the spies made a bad miscalculation.

[Jo Parkinson]

And now Argentina are staring at major, major problems.

[Kate Linebaugh]

As they were getting their travel documents in order, they opted to travel on Russian diplomatic passports. The couple flew under their real names, not as Maria and ludwig, but as Anna and Artem Doltsev. Why would they do that? They'd been so careful. Why would they fly on Russian diplomatic passports?

[Drew Hinshaw]

Obviously, with a Russian diplomatic passport, they wouldn't have needed a visa. They wouldn't have needed to, you know, potentially alert that they were applying for a visa. They could have just gone in, and so that could be one reason.

[Jo Parkinson]

Maybe they didn't want to leave any record on their Argentine passports that they'd been to Russia. Yeah, because that would have been kind of alerting behavior, like, oh, interesting.

[Drew Hinshaw]

Maybe the trip came together at the last minute. They didn't have enough time to apply for a visa. That's one of the unknowables here.

[Kate Linebaugh]

Investigators at owl and its partner agencies pored through reams of government documents, and eventually this travel record came to their attention.

[Drew Hinshaw]

A pair of Russians traveling on diplomatic passports, traveling with two children of Argentinian nationality flew to Moscow. That's all it was. But just seems slightly odd when they start asking if there's any record, either in Slovenia or elsewhere, of these particular Russian diplomats serving at embassies anywhere across Europe. They get nothing back. It's even more of a mystery.

[Kate Linebaugh]

Investigators examine the husband's Russian passport details. They ask themselves, what connections might this guy have in Russia. They find nothing under the couple's names online, but they have one clue. It's in his name.

[Drew Hinshaw]

In Russia, a son will have his father's name as his middle name.

[Kate Linebaugh]

Using this logic, the investigators try to guess the names of his family members. Maybe they could find his father.

[Drew Hinshaw]

When they started to look for the father's name with the same surname on social media, rifling through this huge kind of haystack of information, Looking through Russian sources, they found an image of an individual's house who matched that name. And when they zoomed in on the photo, against the wall was a picture of two newlyweds.

[Kate Linebaugh]

And when the investigators looked closer at this photo inside a Russian house, they recognized the Happy couple.

[Jo Parkinson]

The newlyweds in that picture match the faces of two Argentinian parents living in the suburbs of the capital of Slovenia. So then the question becomes, if these two are Argentinians living in the suburbs, why is their picture, their wedding day picture on a wall in central Russia?

[Drew Hinshaw]

Huh?

[Kate Linebaugh]

Okay, so now Kudivnik has these suspects. What does he do next?

[Drew Hinshaw]

Surveil them? Track them? Build the case against them all without giving them any hint that they were.

[Kate Linebaugh]

Being watched, OWL investigators hack into the Dolcev's phones and intercept their mail.

[Jo Parkinson]

And you have to imagine how nerve wracking this is. These two are expert spies.

[Kate Linebaugh]

They pour over their bank accounts and examine the couple's declared income. Things aren't adding up. Like how could this couple afford the tuition for their children's private schooling? OWL agents start to tail the family's Kia sedan, often following them from a distance.

[Drew Hinshaw]

They have to map their routine. Understand, you know, that these really are the people that they're looking for. And then make a plan in concert with their allies, the CIA, MI6, the other European agencies, about when and exactly how they're going to arrest them.

[Kate Linebaugh]

December 5, 2022. Ljubljana, Sloven. A cold fog is rolling in.

[Jo Parkinson]

The Dulcevs are in their house. It's a Monday morning.

[Drew Hinshaw]

People undercover in civilian cars all across this side street. They waited until the family had dropped off. The children had come back.

[Kate Linebaugh]

Shortly after 9 in the morning, Kadivnik makes the call.

[Drew Hinshaw]

Special forces in masks, sniper rifles crept up over the fence, lifted the shutters that they put down on the windows.

[Jo Parkinson]

And the raid begins. You have guys bursting through windows. Officers are thundering through the house.

[Drew Hinshaw]

Special forces shouting, get down. Get down. Artyom actually fell off his chair and his laptop was still open, communicating securely to Moscow.

[Jo Parkinson]

He doesn't even have time to close out the window while it's still actively running.

[Drew Hinshaw]

The Slovenian police see Maria, who falls to the floor and begins crying.

[Jo Parkinson]

She begins to cry. She claims that she's injured.

[Drew Hinshaw]

The police aren't sure what to do with her. They pick her up, tell her that she's under arrest, and then she kind.

[Jo Parkinson]

Of returns to her feet.

[Drew Hinshaw]

And from that moment, according to people who were there at the raid, her demeanor completely changed and just stands there.

[Jo Parkinson]

Quietly while the arrest is finished.

[Drew Hinshaw]

She then became poker faced, and she said absolutely nothing.

[Jo Parkinson]

It only took minutes.

[Kate Linebaugh]

Police searched the property for hours. Inside was the facade of a domestic life in pieces. Glass and toppled furniture was everywhere, but breakfast was still on the table. Neighbors watched from their windows late into the Night detectives hauled out electronic devices and bags of money.

[Drew Hinshaw]

There was a special compartment in the refrigerator that looked like it had been purpose built. And when the Slovenian police removed it, they found hundreds of thousands of Euros in crisp, new, high denomination notes. They also found a bunch of technology that they weren't familiar with, what seemed to be kind of jerry rigged USB sticks, flash drives that seemed to have another facility to them. And a lot of this stuff was so high tech and unfamiliar to the Slovenians that they ended up sending it over to the US to try and figure out what this stuff was.

[Kate Linebaugh]

The Dolcevs were unmasked. Kadivnik sent word to the CIA that the operation was a success in Russia. Their arrests sent shockwaves through the Kremlin. Moscow immediately recalled sleeper operatives in Greece and Brazil. And soon the Dolcevs would become bargaining chips in a geopolitical game. March 2023. Belgrade, Serbia. Three months after the raid, Joshko Kadivnik slips into a government building. He sits with the Kremlin's top negotiator for prisoner swaps, who has a message direct from Putin himself.

[Jo Parkinson]

Why are you doing America's bidding? Don't get involved in this. You don't want to get involved in this. And his message is really point blank, let's make a trade.

[Drew Hinshaw]

You need to give our people back.

[Jo Parkinson]

Give us our spies back.

[Kate Linebaugh]

By the end of the month, the world learns of another arrest, this time in Russia, one that ends up becoming much more personal to Joe and Drew. And now to our other breaking story. Overnight, we've learned that an American journalist with the Wall Street Journal has now.

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Been arrested in Russia on spying charges.

[Drew Hinshaw]

A Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said they believe Evan Gershkovich was conducting activities not related to journalism.

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The Wall Street Journal denies the allegations allegations against him and is demanding his immediate release.

[Jo Parkinson]

If convicted, he could face up to 20 years inside a Russian prison.

[Drew Hinshaw]

This couple in Slovenia were mentioned to us at one point as people we should watch.

[Jo Parkinson]

The Russians were meeting with the Americans, saying, you know, basically saying, hey, we'd like to trade. Let's do a trade for these two.

[Drew Hinshaw]

They could potentially be involved in a.

[Jo Parkinson]

Trade, and Evan's name was obviously in the mix for that.

[Kate Linebaugh]

Delicate negotiations between Washington and Moscow for a complex prisoner swap went on for the rest of 2023 and into the next year. By the summer of 2024, a deal was coming together. It would be the biggest prisoner swap with Russia since the Cold War. And it was all set to take place on August 1st as Russian state TV captured the homecoming of the Dolcevs. The children had one question for their parents. According to the Kremlin, who was the man with flowers who greeted them in Spanish on the tarmac? They'd never heard of Vladimir Putin. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, another VIP jet was also being received, this one carrying freed Americans. Among the prisoners released by Russia were former Marine Paul Whelan, American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich. Joe and Drew raced to Andrews Air Force base near Washington, D.C. to greet their friend and colleague.

[Jo Parkinson]

There's no red carpet, and out of the plane comes two journalists and a former Marine and Iraq War veteran. And that's it. And the contrast is really striking. You can see Russia celebrating its spies and its assassins, and America's just sort of quietly receiving its two journalists and a veteran.

[Kate Linebaugh]

Evan Gershkovich was held in Russia for more than 16 months. Anna and Artem Doltsev were detained for about 20 months on charges of spying and falsifying documents. All told, Russia freed 16 people in the swap. The west released eight.

[Drew Hinshaw]

This prisoner swap was a kind of window into our really messy, complicated world and the secret world underneath it where these countries are all jockeying and vying for influence. It was a story that is deeper and richer than I think anybody first understood when they looked at it.

[Kate Linebaugh]

And knowing what you know now, do you think we will see more prisoner swaps like this one that we saw on August 1?

[Jo Parkinson]

There will be more August 1st. There may not be as big, may not be as many countries, but this is by now just an established pattern of the way the world works. Every six months, a couple times a year, one country releases an ordinary American charged with trumped up or spurious charges and exchanges them for somebody else, a money launderer, a sanctions buster, a spy. It's just part of what goes on now.

[Kate Linebaugh]

As for the Daltsevs, they're now living openly as Russians. After years of laying low, they've become celebrities, the toast of Russia's intelligence community.

[Jo Parkinson]

They're like folk heroes now. They're doing interviews, they're on tv. They are state media's idea of a patriotic Russian family.

[Drew Hinshaw]

Yeah, they really have become kind of poster children for what Putin defines as this new Russian patriotism and for the primacy of the secret services inside that system. They talked about the sacrifices that they made. They talked about. It's almost like a recruitment campaign.

[Kate Linebaugh]

In a TV special, the children Sophie and Daniel are shown playing near a statue of Stierlitz. Putin's boyhood hero, the fictional super spy. The brother and sister are slowly learning a new language, the one their parents grew up with. Near the end of the interview, Anna says her daughter is already musing about her new identity and her future. Anna says her daughter would like to be a spy, to devote her life to serving Russia just like her mother. That's all for today. Friday, March 28 this episode was produced by Matt Kwong and edited by Colin McNulty. Additional reporting by Juan Ferrero and Sylvina Fridlevsky. Special thanks to Kate Vittoregina. The theme remix in today's episode is by Nathan Singapak. The Journal is a co production of Spotify. In the Wall Street Journal, the show is made by Kathryn Brewer, Pia Gadkari, Rachel Humphries, Sophie Codner, Ryan Knudson, Matt Kwong, Jessica Mendoza, Colin McNulty, Annie Minoff, Laura Morris, Enrique Perez De la Rosa, Sarah Platt, Alessandra Rizzo, Alan Rodriguez Espinosa, Heather Rogers, Pierce Singhe, Jeevika Verma, Lisa Wang, Katherine Whelan, Tatiana Zemis and me, Kate Linebaugh with help from Trina Menino. Our engineers are Griffin Tanner, Nathan Singapak and Peter Leonard. Our theme music is by so Wiley. Additional music this week by Katherine Anderson, Marcus Bagala, Peter Leonard, Billy Libby, Bobby Lord, Emma Munger, Nathan Singapak, Griffin Tanner and Blue Dot Sessions. Fact checking this week by Mary Mathis. Thanks for listening. See you Monday.