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Anna Dultseva hugging Vladimir Putin after returning to Moscow as part of a prisoner swap in August 2024.
Russian spies Artem Dultsev and Anna Dultseva, “illegals” who returned to Russia in August as part of the largest prisoner exchange between Moscow and the West since the end of the Cold War, have been awarded the Orders of Courage by decree of Vladimir Putin, according to a report by Agentstvo, citing a publication in Razvedchik (lit. “Intelligence Officer”) magazine.
The awards were not officially announced. The information came to light through a biographical note accompanying an interview published in Razvedchik — the in-house magazine of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). The date of the award was not specified, and Putin’s decree on the spies’ awards was also notably absent from the Kremlin’s website and in the Garant legal database.
In the Razvedchik interview, Dultseva said that she and Artem “completed their training and were fully ready back in 2010, with Artem already dispatched.” However, at that time, ten Russian sleeper agents were arrested in the United States, leading the couple to postpone their mission.
According to Western intelligence reports, the Dultsevs operated as “sleeper” agents for an extended period of time but were exposed less than a year after being “activated.” The biographical note published in Razvedchik further reveals that the couple began cooperating with Moscow’s intelligence services in 2009 and underwent specialized training for three years. They were then stationed abroad “under special conditions” starting in 2012.
The date of their deployment matches the one reported in The Wall Street Journal, which wrote that the pair’s “decadelong effort to build an entirely false identity” began in 2012. According to the newspaper, they traveled to Argentina separately — Artem arrived from Uruguay, while Anna came from Mexico.
The Dultsevs were arrested in 2022 in Slovenia, where they lived under the guise of an Argentinian married couple using the names “Ludwig Gisch” and “Mayer Muños.” In 2024, they, along with their two children, were returned to Russia as part of a major prisoner exchange that saw the release of 24 people from prisons in six countries. Notable figures released from Russian prisons in the exchange included Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and Russian political prisoners Vladimir Kara-Murza and Ilya Yashin.
The Dultsevs’ children only learned their true identity when the plane carrying the Russian agents home departed from Ankara, Turkey. Vladimir Putin greeted the kids in Spanish when they stepped onto the tarmac in Moscow.
This was not the first time that the children of Russian “illegals” learned about their origins only following their parents’ arrests. The term “illegals” refers to Russian undercover spies who reside in foreign countries for years, or even decades, under false identities, gathering intelligence to send back to Moscow.
In Russia, the Order of Courage that the Dultsevs reportedly received is awarded to individuals “who display selflessness, courage, and bravery in protecting public order, combating crime, rescuing people in emergency situations, and for bold and decisive actions performed in the line of military, civilian, or official duty under life-threatening conditions.” Recipients of three Orders of Courage may be nominated for the title of Hero of Russia.