By Pascal Martin, at the head of a department at the National Cyber Unit and a researcher with CRGN and IRSEM. He has a PhD in modern and contemporary history

"On August 1, 2024, a prisoner exchange between Russia and Western countries received significant media coverage: Vladimir Putin personally welcomed on the airport tarmac a man and a woman supposedly coming from Argentine, along with their two children, aged 8 and 11. Their peculiarity? These two individuals were in fact two “illegal” officers of the SVR, that is, clandestine operatives living abroad under false identities for several years, even several decades. Before their arrest, their immersion was such that their children knew nothing of their parents’ true identities and spoke not Russian but Spanish (which earned them a “buenas noches” from the Russian president as they disembarked from the plane). (...)"

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