Sofia, 11, and Daniel, 8, did not speak the language and knew nothing about their new home country
The Russian government plane that landed in Moscow from Ankara on Thursday carried an assortment of spies, assassins and criminals, one half of the biggest prisoner exchange since the cold war.
But among the first to descend the stairs to the tarmac, where president Vladimir Putin was waiting to greet the returnees, were two young children, looking wide-eyed and confused.
Sofia, 11, and Daniel, 8, had been born in Argentina. They later moved with their parents, Maria Mayer and Ludwig Gisch, to Slovenia, where Mayer ran an online art gallery and Gisch started an IT company.
Mayer told friends the family had left their home country of Argentina to avoid street crime. The family spoke Spanish at home; the children went to an international school in Ljubljana, where they studied in English.
The couple were arrested in December 2022, when the family home in a quiet Ljubljana suburb was raided by armed police after a tip-off from an allied intelligence service. After the arrest of their parents, Sofia and Daniel were taken into foster care, and were not reunited with them until Thursday’s exchange.
I feel terrible for those children. You’d feel like your parents’ love for you had been fake all along.
It probably was fake. I’d imagine the people who are selected for these assignments are borderline or complete sociopaths who don’t have problems putting their mission above their entanglements.
If these kids are old enough to have any sense they aught to flee the first chance they get.
Could have been worse. We used to execute spies.
We still do execute spies, as long as their actions were sufficiently serious.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/794
18 U.S. Code § 794 - Gathering or delivering defense information to aid foreign government
(a) Whoever, with intent or reason to believe that it is to be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of a foreign nation, communicates, delivers, or transmits, or attempts to communicate, deliver, or transmit, to any foreign government, or to any faction or party or military or naval force within a foreign country, whether recognized or unrecognized by the United States, or to any representative, officer, agent, employee, subject, or citizen thereof, either directly or indirectly, any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, note, instrument, appliance, or information relating to the national defense, shall be punished by death or by imprisonment for any term of years or for life, except that the sentence of death shall not be imposed unless the jury or, if there is no jury, the court, further finds that the offense resulted in the identification by a foreign power (as defined in section 101(a) of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978) of an individual acting as an agent of the United States and consequently in the death of that individual, or directly concerned nuclear weaponry, military spacecraft or satellites, early warning systems, or other means of defense or retaliation against large-scale attack; war plans; communications intelligence or cryptographic information; or any other major weapons system or major element of defense strategy.
We also don’t have parole for federal crimes, so when the statue says you maybe get sentenced to life, it doesn’t mean “you get at most fifteen years until a parole hearing” the way it does in Germany. It means you’re going to jail for the rest of your life.
They were living in Slovenia, though, and the Council of Europe requires members to not have the death penalty, so they wouldn’t have been executed. The only European country that isn’t in the Council of Europe and has the death penalty is Belarus. Well, and Russia withdrew, and the Kremlin did extrajudicial killings anyway when Russia was in the Council of Europe.
I also don’t think that Slovenia considered this to be at the upper end of the scale. They apparently, assuming that this was them, got a year and seven months. I don’t know Slovenia’s criminal code, but I am confident that whatever espionage law they have permits for more-severe penalties than that.
They aren’t gonna trust their parents ever again
Eight might be young enough to forgive them, but I highly doubt eleven is.
Worst surprise ever
I mean…can’t be that much of a surprise. Those are two of the most Russian looking parents I’ve ever seen. I’m surprised one of their kids isn’t just a gross ketchup and mayo dressing.
Everyone should go watch The Americans. Because that series touches on this issue and the finale stays with you.
One of the best drama series I’ve seen.
Shit. I totally forgot I never watched the last season of that show. Wow. I feel like I need to go back and watch the whole thing. It was all really entertaining as far as I remember.
I feel so bad for that girl. She looks shell shocked in every picture I’ve seen of this
I mean, if I were 11 years old and I sat down with my mom and dad on an airplane, and they told me all at once that:
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The brief period that I’ve been living with a foster family is over, and my parents are going to be raising me again.
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I am leaving the country that I’ve been living in permanently.
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I wasn’t actually a citizen of the (other) country that I thought I was and whose language I know.
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My mom and dad are a team of deep-cover spies who are criminals in the country where we had been living and can’t go back.
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They work for Russia.
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We’re all citizens of Russia.
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I need to start learning Russian now, as that’s what I’ll be using moving forward.
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We’re all going to go live in Russia.
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I’m about to personally meet with and be lauded by and presented with a boquet by the president of Russia, who I’ve never heard of, on camera, and need to be on good behavior.
That’s…kind of a lot for an eleven-year-old to get hit with at once.
EDIT: Well, they might have known some of that in advance. They might have known that they were permanently going to be with their parents, and while they can’t have known all of what was going on with their parents, since they didn’t know they were spying for Russia, they might have known that their parents were in some kind of trouble with the law.
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Removed by mod
