The arrest in Slovenia, in 2023, of a marriage with Argentine passports accused of spying for Russia lit the fuse of what two years later is Topos (Planet, 2025), the last book by Hugo Alconada Mon (La Plata, 50 years), one of the most reputed research journalists in Argentina and columnist of this newspaper. It is a non-fiction text, based on dozens of testimonies and documentary sources, which reconstructs the story of Artjom Viktorovič Dulcev and Ana Valerevna Dulceva, who between 2012 and 2019 lived in Buenos Aires, a Namibio-Austrian he and Greek-Mexican she, and formed a family like so many middle class and with two children. Now, we know that his life in Buenos Aires was nothing more than a “legend”, as it is said in the jargon of secret services, built to arrive, intermittently from 2017 and already definitive in January 2023, without raising suspicions in Slovenia, the final destination of the mission they had entrusted to them. The world finally knew that they were spies because on August 1, 2024, the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, received them as heroes in Moscow, as part of what was the most important exchange of spies since the end of the Cold War. Alconda Mon tira de la Punta de la Madja until reconstructing an incredible story, full of details about the functioning of Russian secret services.
Ask. Did he get the attention that in Argentina he knew so little about this couple?
Answer. I was surprised that intelligence services were blind and at the same time how inside Argentina they were inserted. Because they lived in the Belgrano neighborhood, they bought a car, they had two children and baptized them, they put together an office. They were completely implemented, but you started scratching and everything was a huge facade.
P. The book describes how this facade is part of its training as spies
R. You have to make a division between legal spies and illegal spies. The legal ones are those who use their name and surname and work linked to embassies. The illegal are with another identity and another nationality, outside the diplomatic system. If they are discovered and the country that sends them, in this case, Russia does not admit them, they end in prisoners where they are caught. That is the first axis. The second is the training process, where they are told ‘from now on you are going to be Colombian and you have to study Colombian history, Colombian jokes, Colombian food, Colombian football teams’. Because if tomorrow they meet a Colombian they cannot skate.
P. In this case, that process is done in Russia
R. Exact. Once trained, the next phase is the landing in the host country. These spies formed in Moscow arrive in Buenos Aires and begin to build what is called the legend, which for us would be the facade. This is basically giving a story like Argentine. You get domiciled in Argentina, Argentine diplomas, residence, documents and, in the end, passports. And eventually children, and not only for the facade. The children potentially give you new sources and, finally, they will be the true spies. They are children of Russians, but born in Argentina, they don’t even have an accent. The last phase is the target country, which in this case was a hybrid, because Slovenia allowed you free circulation within Europe. In Slovenia they live several years and, for example, to the school of their children were the children of the president of the Energy Agency of the European Union.
P. That is to say that his operation was successful
R. Of course. They formed a facade in Argentina and spied on Argentina, and formed facade in Slovenia and spied on Slovenia.
P. What did they spy in Argentina?
R. On the cow in the site. They take the boys to an English school in Belgrano and form links with the parents who interest them. Among others, with a mother who works for an oil company, another from an oil supplies and a mother who works in a gas. The three, connected with cow a death. It was not his mission, but they offer Moscow those who are going to find out and from there they decide whether they are interested or not interest.
P. Doesn’t the ease with which they achieved Argentine documents?
R. Not just that. They moved with four different identities and the alarms never jumped, not only in Argentina. They did not jump in Uruguay, Brazil, Colombia and in Europe. With his third identity, he took pictures in Rio de Janeiro, goes to the Iguazu cataracts, crosses the triple border, enters Argentina and comes to Buenos Aires, crosses Uruguay, returns to Argentina and travels the interior of the country. The woman reappears in Santiago, Chile, meets her husband in Viña del Mar and he returns to Buenos Aires and she to Mexico.
P. All those movements for what they were?
R. To build and feed your facade. ‘I am an Austrian tourist and I was walking with my wife for all these places. “
P. The story is altered by a fact in the United States that surpasses them …
R. There is a great FBI raid that generates in Russia the fear that other spy identities are burned. That is why they repathered the couple to Moscow and give them a new identity. There is a vacuum between 2009 and 2012. That year they send them to South America.
P. I also imagine that they are a very expensive product.
R. Very expensive. They are years of training and resources. In 2012 they move between Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Colombia, France and Türkiye with its new identity. The trick is that the passport is authentic, but it has false data. Until biometric machines arise, what they have to verify in migrations is whether the passport is authentic. Now it would be more difficult to do what they did.
P. Can you say then that this is the last great story of spies?
R. No, in any way. Russian spies are throughout Latin America. I’m not just sure, there are the data. Part of this framework shows a Brazilian facade arrested in Norway, another Spanish facade arrested in Poland, another in Uruguay and another in Brazil.
P. The book pays close attention to the fact that the couple has had children.
R. Is that they married in Moscow and really wanted themselves. I have the photos of that marriage in Russia. They do all the journey we know, they simulate that they know each other here and get married again in Buenos Aires. I also have the conviction that the children were the product of love, for what the doctors who attend them and many other evidence tell. All that, of course, within a chip of spies that are at the service of the country and where the motto is “without the right to glory, for the glory of the nation.” If my boys have to eat two years in an orphanage, I will do it because I am part of a gear. And they did so.
P. Is this book the claim of investigative journalism, now that the profession is so beaten?
R. I hope, but I think we are so criticized, denosted and vilified that this does not reach. Our trade is at a very complicated moment and will take us years, a lot of effort and acts of contrition to recover some of our image.
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