Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov praised the Russians who were released in a major prisoner exchange between Western countries and Russia, and explained some of the methods and tactics behind their work abroad.
The Kremlin said on Friday that Vadim Krasikov, a hitman returned from Germany in the biggest East-West prisoner swap since the Cold War, was an employee of Russia's FSB security service and served in the Alpha Group, part from the special units of the FSB, reports "Reuters".
Krasikov was convicted by a German court of killing a former Chechen fighter in a Berlin park in 2019, and President Vladimir Putin hugged him after he got off a plane in Moscow on Thursday night.
Krasikov, wearing a baseball cap and tracksuit top, was the first of the returnees to step off the plane and meet Putin, signaling his importance to Moscow, which prides itself on returning intelligence agents arrested abroad.
Among those Moscow took back: the Russian Dulcevi family, including their two children, who a court in Slovenia convicted of impersonating Argentinians to spy on EU and NATO member states.
Peskov confirmed on Friday that the couple was a spy cell of the type "illegal" - undercover agents trained to impersonate foreigners who spend years abroad under their disguised identities.
"The children of the "illegal" intelligence agents who flew in yesterday learned they were Russians only after the plane took off for Moscow from Ankara," Peskov told reporters.
"Before that, they did not know that they were Russians and that they had something to do with our country. And you must have seen that when the children came down the stairs of the plane, they did not speak Russian and that Putin greeted them in Spanish. He said Buenos Nochas."
"The children asked their parents yesterday who was welcoming them to 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, who said Russian government agencies were working to free other Russians abroad, said the prisoner swap, which pro-Kremlin analysts described as a victory for Moscow, was arranged by the FSB and the US Central Intelligence Agency.< /p>
Peskov said Putin felt it was vital to meet the returnees personally at the airport outside their plane.
"This was a tribute to the people who serve their country and who, after many hard trials and thanks to the work of many people, were able to return to their country,", he said.
Putin has promised the returnees state awards and a conversation about their future.
Asked if the prisoner swap was a sign that Russia might be ready to strike a compromise deal on Ukraine, Peskov said they were different situations and that a possible diplomatic solution to what Russia called a "special military operation" in Ukraine, but it is conducted on "different principles".