Sleeper Agents in the UK

A recent Russian prisoner swap included a sleeper agent operating in Scotland

(Photo credit: FX)

One of my favourite spy shows to air on TV was the excellent FX production of The Americans. Written and advised by former FBI agents who operated against Russians in the USA, the show was well regarded and reviewed by intelligence professionals for the realistic tradecraft and the Cold War atmospherics of the 1980s. The plot of the show revolves around two Russian sleeper agents inserted into the USA, and their deep cover operations. What gave the show more depth than the standard good spy/bad spy narrative was the personal conflicts the couple faced. Living, to all intents and purposes, the American dream; good jobs, good house in the suburbs, barbecues and beers with the neighbours, raising two all-American kids. But also carrying out targeted assassinations, blackmail and extortion, recruitment of government officials to steal state secrets. Each year, the husband felt more conflicted as he noted how well they were actually doing in America in comparison to what their life in Moscow would be like. The freedoms, democracy, wealth-making opportunities, stability, all elements of a comfortable family life that didn’t exist in Russia. There was also the question of their children. Completely unaware that mum and dad were Soviet spies, these kids lived the typical American life; yellow school bus pick-ups, little league, halloween trick or treat. But the parents always knew that the day would come when they would be swiftly recalled to Moscow and their true identities as spies revealed to their children. I won’t spoil this element of the show for anyone intending to watch it, but the way it it is handled on the show is an interesting plot line.

Many people would assume that the role of the long-term Russian sleeper agent was consigned to the dusty filing cabinet of Cold War anachronisms. Or perhaps still exists in diluted form in Eastern European countries where Russia continues to harbour a grudge at their independence from the historical Soviet state. After all, it is an expensive, long term commitment that relies upon secure communication channels and deep, protracted cover stories. But a recent prisoner swap between Russia and the US showed clearly that Russia continues to deploy sleeper agents to countries around the globe.

Including the UK.

On the 1st of August, the US and Russia conducted a prisoner swap of 24 detainees, the largest number in over 15 years. The US wanted journalists and citizens that Russia had detained as useful pawns in the Cold War 2.0 conflict currently ongoing. The Russians wanted intelligence agents and operatives released from Western prisons and returned to Moscow. Among the freed Russian detainees however, was a small family: Man, woman, and two kids, greeted and welcomed personally by President Vladimir Putin as they stepped off the aircraft in Moscow. Anna Dultseva, her husband Artem Dultsev, and their two bewildered children had been brought in from the cold as part of a prisoner exchange, freeing them from prison in Slovenia where they had been detained for espionage activities.

(Photo Credit: Reuters)

What was even more interesting was the fact that Anna had been operating as a Russian intelligence agent in the UK; Scotland to be precise. Their initial emplacement as Russian spies seems to have been to Slovenia in 2017, where they posed as Ludwig Gisch and Maria Mayer, an Argentinian couple with two children. Ludwig ran a startup IT company and Maria an online art gallery. Both professions provided excellent cover for travel, meetings, and movement of cash. All essential enablers for their espionage activities. Basing themselves in Slovenia allowed free access through the Schengen scheme to EU countries where they could carry out their covert missions and assignments. With no formal border controls, the couple could travel without the risk of a deep dive into their backgrounds and travel history. An absolute boon for any intelligence operative.

(The deep cover passports used by the couple)

This travel also included Scotland, Edinburgh in particular, where Anna courted artists and hosted exhibitions. Posing as ‘Maria’, an art dealer from her Art Gallery 5’14 business, she contacted up and coming artists and encouraged them to exhibit in a nondescript space in Leith’s Ocean Terminal shopping centre. The artists themselves had no clue or suspicions about Maria’s true role, most of them flattered and grateful for the exposure of their works. The space that ‘Maria’ used to host the exhibitions was run as a collective, available for short term leasing or rental, negating the need for ownership and the onerous financial and background checks that go hand in hand with commercial property purchases.

But what was ‘Maria’/Anna’s role in Scotland? Why a small, local, little-visited commercial space in a Scottish shopping mall? When she and her husband were arrested in Slovenia in 2022, the amount of cash secreted throughout the house was described as ‘incredible ’ and took some time to collect together and count. This fact, coupled with the cover story of an art dealer, suggests she held a paymaster or financial support role. To a network of spies and intelligence operatives in Europe, Anna may have been the monetary link between them and the Kremlin.

Spy networks are an expensive business, particularly when conducted by non-declared/illegal operatives. Fake identity documents that will pass muster at inspections. Cars, houses, mobile phones, laptops, computers, surveillance equipment, weapons, explosives, drugs. Then there is the huge bill for bribes to public officials and payments to Assets. All this money has to come from somewhere and, in this digital age, be untraceable and unaccountable. Many of these networks augment their funding through criminal enterprises, bringing in dirty cash that needs to be laundered in order to be reinserted into operations as legitimate funds without drawing untoward attention.

In the intelligence world, there is a mantra of ‘follow the money’. No matter how tight a group or organisation is with its security and loyalty, they all need money and it has to be brought in from somewhere then spent by the group. It’s usually the key weakness of both criminal and terrorist organisations and often provides the start point for investigations and penetrations by intelligence or law enforcement agencies. The Anna’s of the world are held in high regard for their capabilities and their contribution to the ongoing success of their nation’s external intelligence/espionage operations. Without the likes of her, these operations grind to a halt or become far less effective than they could be.

Converting dirty cash to legitimate money is a complex process in today’s digital era. For some time and, to a lesser extent even now, cryptocurrency provided a conduit for the movement of vast sums of cash while avoiding state/institutional scrutiny. Casinos were an old go-to favourite of the likes of Anna as, you could purchase say £50k worth of chips, play for an hour or so winning and losing in small gains and losses, then cash out, leaving the establishment with ‘clean’ money or a cashier’s cheque to be deposited in the bank. Today however, large sums of money being moved around in any transactions are flagged and followed, making even these tried and tested methods more difficult to cover. And that’s where some ‘old school’ tradecraft has come back in vogue in a big way.

Dead Letter Boxes (DLBs) are locations known to two people where something can be secreted by one person and picked up by another without the requirement of meeting face to face. There is a prearranged identification signal agreed by the two that denotes when something has been deposited and again, when it has been collected. In Anna’s case, she may travel to Edinburgh, say, as part of her scheduled visit to the collective at Ocean Terminal. While there, she makes a convoluted journey involving trams, buses, and walking, to the quiet suburb of Morningside where she enjoys a pleasant stroll in the Scottish sunshine past a row of Victorian villas. She enters the peaceful haven of Morningside Cemetery, making her way along the shaded main thoroughfare and towards the quieter part of the grounds. Here she pauses in quiet reflection at one of the older graves guarded by a gnarled yew tree, the ancient headstone practically unreadable. There is no-one around and the spot is not visible from the other paths so she stoops and with one hand, brushes at the weeds congregating at the base of the headstone and with the other, deftly removes a brick-sized stone from the abutting wall. Her movement continues as she thrusts her hand into her coat pocket and pulls out a thick, waterproofed lump that she stows in the dark recess of the wall then replaces the stone. She studies the stone as she stands, happy that there are no outward indications that it is anything else other than a loose stone in a wall of hundreds just like it. With another respectful pat to the top of the headstone, she makes her way out of the cemetery in the opposite direction to which she arrived. As she exits the large, formal gated area, she pauses and bends to tie her shoelace by the curved stone wall. In one swift movement, she pulls a flattened coke can from her pocket and rams it hard into a gap in the mortar between two stones just above pavement level. The can is inserted completely into the gap with only a tiny edge of the metal rim visible and as she stands, Anna can see it will be invisible to anyone passing the location who isn’t actively looking for it. But someone will be looking for it. A GRU officer who has been operating in Scotland, orchestrating anti-Ukraine activities and violence and sabotage against pro-Ukrainian businesses. The GRU officer passes the cemetery gate every day on the way to his bus stop and will no doubt be very happy to see the signal informing him that there is twenty-thousand pounds in ‘clean’ money behind the headstone by the yew. Anna catches a bus from the nearest stop, switches to a taxi at the West End, and finishes her journey by tram at Ocean Terminal, confident that, just like the twenty grand in cash she just deposited in a Dead Letter Box, she too is ‘clean’; clear of any surveillance. With a small smile, she checks her phone and pushes up her sunglasses as she walks through the shaded entrance of the shopping centre.

That example is not a flight of fancy. While intelligence agencies move with the times, old school tradecraft such as DLBs retain their usefulness, particularly when physical elements have to be passed but coming together to do so is either impractical or too great a security risk. An intelligence asset with financing responsibilities would be adept in the use and utility of DLBs. The fact that Anna had a staggering amount of cash stashed throughout her home indicates that she was moving significant sums around as well as putting it through whatever laundering mechanisms she had devised.

But however clever or well trained Anna may have been, either she or Artem made a mistake at some point. Or they were given up by someone within the network that she supported. Either way, the couple were identified and arrested in 2022 in Slovenia. Their children were taken from them and placed into foster care, aware only that their parents had been detained by the police. On July 31, 2024, Anna and Artem pleaded guilty to spying and falsifying documents. It should be noted that this was one day before the prisoner exchange took place and was probably the condition the Slovenians had demanded for the pair to be included in the swap. The pair were reunited with their children and flown to Russia.

In an interview with the Russian press, Anna stated that she and Artem had told their children of their true role during that plane journey. She went on to say that her daughter had cried when told but also that she and Artem intended to continue to serve their country. In the press photo of President Putin walking with the Dutslevs, the daughter’s facial expression seems to be one of shock and disassociation in contrast with her smiling mother. I can’t help but wonder if, like their fictional counterparts on ‘The Americans’, the Dutslevs talked about how they would break the news to their kids that they were Russian spies and not Argentinian business people. Maybe they had but were arrested before they had the opportunity. Maybe they thought they wouldn’t have to, that they would continue in their roles for a far longer duration. Judging by the daughter’s face in the photographs however, the revelation was a huge, unexpected shock.

The Russian press covered the prisoner exchange and lauded the returnees as heroes of the nation, singling out Anna and her husband as “high-class specialists”, perhaps confirmation of Anna’s deep-cover financial role. The quote below is how the Dutslevs were described on Russian state TV:

“Such people give their whole life to serving the motherland and make sacrifices a normal person cannot understand. They brought up their children as Spanish-speaking Catholics but now they are about to find out what borscht is.”

As a young teen accustomed to attending an International school and all the freedoms and privileges of Europe, I can’t help but wonder if Anna’s daughter is as happy as the press with exchanging said freedoms and privileges for a bowl of beetroot soup.