US offers to exchange WSJ journalist for Russian spy couple arrested in Slovenia
The couple used Slovenia as a base because it is easy to travel to Italy, Croatia and other EU countries to transmit orders from Moscow
The lack of imprisonment of Russian spies in the United States has become an obstacle to the release of Americans who have been effectively taken hostage by the Putin regime. But Western countries may have a new trump card, according to The Wall Street Journal.
In December 2022, a married couple from Argentina, Maria Rosa Mayer Munoz and Ludwig Gisch, were detained in Slovenia. They lived with their two children in Ljubljana, she ran an online art gallery, and he ran an IT start-up.
In fact, according to court documents and representatives of the intelligence services of Slovenia and other Western countries, Gish was born in Bashkiria, and Munoz in Nizhny Novgorod.
They are deeply concealed employees of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, Artem Dultsev Viktorovich and his wife Anna Valerievna Dultseva, the so-called illegal immigrants. The communication equipment installed on the computers with Moscow was so well encrypted that neither Slovenian nor American specialists could crack it.
And in a secret compartment inside the fridge, they kept banknotes worth hundreds of thousands of euros.
The pair used Slovenia as a base because it was easy to travel to Italy, Croatia and other EU countries to meet with sources and pass on orders from Moscow.
It was also believed that Slovenian intelligence services were as effective as those in leading Western countries.
In the coming weeks, a closed trial will begin in which the couple will be tried on espionage charges.
But the so-called Argentine couple could also be included in a deal to swap them for prisoners in Russia, including The Wall Street Journal's Evan Hershkowitz and former Marine Paul Whelan, senior Slovenian and U.S. officials told the WSJ.
According to people familiar with the situation, the Kremlin has already expressed interest in the Dultsevs' return during negotiations led by Nikolai Patrushev.
The FSB arrested Gershkovich in March 2023. Putin wanted to release Vadim Krasikov, who is serving a life sentence in Germany for the 2019 murder in Berlin of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, who fought against Russia in the second Chechen war.
Berlin did not agree to hand over Krasikov, but in November 2023, President Joe Biden proposed to Chancellor Olaf Scholz that the exchange include politician Alexei Navalny. However, Navalny unexpectedly died in prison on 16 November, a week after Biden and Scholz met.
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