When you find out your parents are Russian spies

Apparently the TV show "The Americans" was based on a true story.

LINK

Amazing story. Apparently the kids had no idea but their parents had been sent to the US before they were born from Russia. The FBI arrested them in 2010.

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Not only were their parents indeed Russian spies, they were Russians. The man and woman the boys knew as Mom and Dad really were their parents, but their names were not Donald Heathfield and Tracey Foley. Those were Canadians who had died long ago, as children; their identities had been stolen and adopted by the boys’ parents.

Their real names were Andrei Bezrukov and Elena Vavilova. They were both born in the Soviet Union

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quote:

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The family had been planning a month-long summer break in Paris, Moscow and Turkey; their mother told them to escape the media circus and fly to Russia. After a stopover in Paris, Alex and Tim boarded a plane to Moscow, unsure of what to expect on arrival. They had never been to Russia before. “It was a really terrifying moment,” Alex recalls. “You’re sitting on the plane, you have a few hours to kill and you don’t know what’s coming. You just sit there and think and think.”

As the brothers disembarked, they were met at the plane door by a group of people who introduced themselves in English as colleagues of their parents. They told the brothers to trust them, and led them outside the terminal to a van.

“They showed us photos of our parents in their 20s in uniform, photos of them with medals. That was the moment when I thought, ‘OK, this is real.’ Until that moment, I’d refused to believe any of it was true,” Alex says. He and Tim were taken to an apartment and told to make themselves at home; one of their minders spent the next few days showing them around Moscow; they took them to museums, even the ballet. An uncle and a cousin the brothers had no idea existed paid a visit; a grandmother also dropped by, but she spoke no English and the boys not a word of Russian.

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Now the kids are apparently caught in an in-between land. The countries where they grew up (US and Canada) will not accept them, so they can't go to school here. Russia will, but they never lived there and don't want to go there either.