Russian Sleeper Cells in America: The Hidden Espionage Threat

FBI moves in — Russian sleeper cell couple caught as agents close the trap in broad daylight after months of surveillance

There’s something uniquely unsettling about the idea that the enemy might already be living next door. Not in a metaphorical way — literally. Blending in. Mowing the lawn. Playing the part. And waiting for the call.

That’s what sleeper agents do. And the Russians have been perfecting the craft for decades.

The concept isn’t fiction. It’s not some far-fetched plot from a Cold War thriller. Russian sleeper cells are real, have operated in the U.S., and still pose a very serious threat to American national security.

The CIA knows it well. They’ve deployed sleepers of their own overseas — agents who “go to sleep” for years. No contact. No signals. They build their cover, blend in, and wait. But the Russians? They mastered turning ordinary-looking lives into long-term assets. Sometimes entire families are involved. Sometimes it’s a woman posing as a stay-at-home mom in suburban New Jersey, like Cynthia Murphy — real name Lydia Guryeva — who was tasked with developing a relationship with a high-ranking U.S. official. Sometimes it’s a real estate developer’s “friend,” Vicky Pelaez — aka Mikhail Kott — a Russian operative posing as a journalist, whose job was to mine information on U.S. economic and political issues. All it takes is a trigger — then the cell activates.