Kremlin spokesman admits hitman Krasikov is FSB agent and says children of spies returned in prisoner swap didn’t know they’re Russian

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday that Vadim Krasikov, the ex-FSB officer who was serving prison time in Germany for the assassination of a former Chechen field commander before he was released as part of Thursday’s historic prisoner swap, is part of the FSB’s Alpha special forces unit. It was the first time the Kremlin has acknowledged that the convicted murderer is a Russian intelligence agent.

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The Russian authorities rolled out the red carpet at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport on Thursday to welcome the eight prisoners traded back to the country, a group that included hackers and spies in addition to the FSB hitman. Vladimir Putin personally met the returnees and promised they would receive state awards. Footage from the meeting shows the president embracing Krasikov and greeting him like a friend.

Peskov also said that the children of Russian spies Artem Dultsev and Anna Dultseva, who were released to Moscow from Slovenia as part of this week’s exchange, did not know they were Russian until they were on the plane from Ankara. According to the press secretary, Putin greeted the children in Spanish when he met the family on the tarmac because they don’t know Russian.

“They asked their parents who this man greeting them was. They don’t even know who Putin is. But that’s how illegals work — they make these kinds of sacrifices for their work out of dedication to their cause,” Peskov said.

Dultsev and Dultseva were arrested on espionage charges in 2022 in Slovenia, where they had been living under fake identities with Argentinian passports. The day before the prisoner swap, they were sentenced to 19 months in prison, which they had served while awaiting trial.