Their parents posed as Argentinian citizens, and Vladimir Putin greeted the children in Spanish. According to the Kremlin, they did not speak Russian nor did they know who Putin was.
Why did Russian President Vladimir Putin greet the children of just-freed Russian spies in Spanish?
The reason is straight out of an episode of the hit TV spy show “The Americans.”
Among the first prisoners stepping off the plane to greet President Putin was a slender brown-haired woman grasping the hand of her young daughter. She appeared to stifle a sob as she hugged Putin. He handed her a bouquet of purple and white flowers, and another to her daughter. Putin also hugged her husband and kissed their son.
Then, over the din of the airplane, Putin could be heard greeting the children with “buenas noches” — the Spanish phrase for “good evening.”
Their parents were undercover Russian spies who posed as Argentinian citizens living in Slovenia and went by the names Ludwig Gisch and Maria Rosa Mayer Muños. They were part of Thursday’s massive prisoner swap involving several countries.
Peskov said, before praising intelligence officers who “make such sacrifices for the sake of their work, for the sake of devotion to the cause.”>
Yeah, this kids will be very happy about “the cause”.
Wow. This is straight out of The Americans…
Because Russia is hands down the best operator of these types of human intelligence networks.
Not because they’re just smarter than everyone else, or have some genetic predisposition to being better, but because they’ve had to mass-produce people with this exact skill set to maintain their own empire for over a hundred years.
What we think of as Russia, is really mostly Slavic Muscovites who have stitched together the largest continuous empire on Earth and spanning many different ethnicities and races who didn’t join by choice, but by being conquered.
It just so happens that the tradecraft and skills required for maintaining their large and diverse empire are pretty much the same ones necessary for this type of deep cover foreign espionage.
Buenas noches = Good night
Buenas tardes = Good evening
In Spanish, “buenas noches” is not exclusively used as a farewell like in English, it can also be used as a greeting, just as “good morning” and “good evening”.
It’s strange how that happened. In English “good morning” is simply a greeting, same with “good day” (or g’day in Australia) and “good afternoon”. In context, they can also be a way of saying “goodbye”. But, if you’re working the night shift and you show up at work, you can’t greet your co-worker with “good night”.
I find it cute when someone speaking Spanish says “buenas noches” as a farewell. It seems like they’re saying “hello” while waving bye. It’s obvious that they learned Spanish as a second language. But Spanish as a 2nd language is almost universally seen as endearing by Hispanophones, not like some people in the US see people that view English as a 2nd language as insufficient, lesser, or rude.
Edit: Apparently, I am mistaken. Buenas noches can be used as a farewell. Maybe there are differences due to dialect.
Article says they were arrested in 2022. Did the kids not realize it was for espionage?
If they kept it out of the news, I don’t see why they should have known if nobody told them what’s going on.
Having to go live in Russia. Yuckkkk
