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Children of freed sleeper agents learned they were Russians on the flight

33 points| AftHurrahWinch | 1 year ago |reuters.com

22 comments

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[+] jmyeet|1 year ago|reply
Shout out to FX’s The Americans, a fictional TV show about sleeper Soviet agents in the 1980s. It’s a fantastic show, easily one of my top 3 of all time.

I honestly thought “illegals” were an urban myth. It’s wild that suck a thing can exist with modern technology and does exist.

[+] throwup238|1 year ago|reply
> It’s wild that suck a thing can exist with modern technology and does exist.

It's easier than you'd think. A long time fugitive was caught in my parents' community last year and it turned out that all he had to do for his cover identities was bribe a county coroner and a secretary at the vital records office to prevent death certificates from getting fully filed. The identities aren't invented whole cloth but repurposed from dead people.

(The fugitive was only caught after 20 years because he rented a car that was later used in an unrelated major crime and his DNA was flagged during the investigation)

[+] nixnixers|1 year ago|reply
I find it interesting that the parents in the generation shown by the Americans could have a real political philosophy that (for a believer) would justify warping their childrens lives as some kind of global freedom fighter.. This generation is being taken home by petty nationalists at best, to a nation they have no attachment to.
[+] aagha|1 year ago|reply
I have just 2 episodes left to watch!!!
[+] AftHurrahWinch|1 year ago|reply
MOSCOW, Aug 2 (Reuters) - A family of Russian sleeper agents flown to Moscow in the biggest East-West prisoner swap since the Cold War were so deep under cover that their children found out they were Russians only after the flight took off, the Kremlin said on Friday.

"Before that, they didn't know that they were Russian and that they had anything to do with our country," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

"And you probably saw that when the children came down the plane's steps that they don't speak Russian and that Putin greeted them in Spanish. He said 'buenas noches'."

"The children asked their parents yesterday who it was that was meeting them (in Moscow). They didn't even know who Putin was. This is how the 'illegals' work. They make such sacrifices out of dedication to their work," Peskov said.

[+] wumeow|1 year ago|reply
Interesting that Peskov doesn’t even bother denying they were spies and actually boasts about it.