Russia resurrects Soviet spy center in Cuba to ‘listen’ to US

In 2001, the spy center was closed as unnecessary, but now it seems to be working again.

Russia has reopened a spy center in Cuba that was officially closed by Putin back in 2001. Now specialists in “wiretapping” from the Russian GRU are being transferred to the island, The Insider writes .

It is noted that the first reports of a new stage of cooperation between Russia and Cuba on the issue of espionage for the United States appeared in July 2014. Then they began to restore the work of the radio-electronic center (REC) “Lourdes” on the outskirts of Havana.

The REC was built in 1967 and was used first by the Soviet GRU and later by the KGB. The technical means of the center made it possible to intercept data from American communications satellites, telephone conversations and messages from the NASA mission control center in Florida. At its peak, the number of military and civilian personnel of the REC reached three thousand people.

The spy center was closed in 2001, when Russia’s relations with the United States were relatively friendly, and the cost of maintaining the REC was a burden on the Russian budget, which had not yet entered the era of oil windfalls. The specialists of the center, called “rumors” were returned to Russia, the spy equipment was partially destroyed, partially taken to the Russian Federation. Some of the premises were leased to Chinese and North Korean intelligence agencies, who, according to legend, taught their officers Spanish there.

However, since 2014, a kind of renaissance has begun in relations between Russia and Cuba. And against this background, the Russian Embassy in Havana began to recruit quite unusual “diplomats.”

And if ordinary spies under the roofs of Russian embassies today do not surprise anyone, then the spy contingent in Cuba is quite specific. This attracted the attention of investigative journalists. Collecting data from open sources, they managed to find out that among the “diplomats” in Cuba there were a suspiciously large number of specialists in the field of communications and electronic intelligence.

For example, a certain Sergey Vasenkov was found in Cuba, who graduated from the Faculty of Cybernetics of the Moscow Institute of Radio Engineering, Electronics and Automation (MIREA), which trains specialists in the field of information security, system analysis, and aircraft rocket science. Many graduates of MIREA work in the special services.

Another cybernetician who ended up in Havana is Vitaly Kondratenko. He graduated from the Faculty of Computational Cybernetics and Mathematics of Moscow State University, and in 1992 he was issued an officer’s certificate No. GV 99839.

And there are dozens of such Russians in Cuba who are of greater interest. But, as a former soldier of the special communications troops told reporters on condition of anonymity, today thousands of specialists are no longer needed in Cuba.

“Now there is a completely different software and operating principles, and there is no need to keep thousands of “hearers” in Cuba so that they listen to every frequency. Thirty people are enough, and they will control the United States and also hook Canada,” he said.

Russia and the US are spying on each other

It should be noted that the United States does not remain indebted to the Russians and is also trying to spy on the aggressor country. So, in May , it became known that the CIA launched an advertisement on social networks, through which Russians are being agitated to become informants for American intelligence services. The CIA said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine created a historic opportunity “for the Russians to come to us and provide the information the United States needs.”

The Americans do not refuse technical intelligence either. So, in June it became known that the United States plans to launch into space a whole group of spy satellites that will “look after” Russia and China.

(C)UNIAN 2023