MEXICO CITY.- Russia would be seeking the “destabilization of Western democracy” through its operation of espionage running from Mexico warned Mary Anastasia O’Grady, columnist for The Wall Street Journal.
According to an article in that publication, Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Kremlin Security Council, who visited Cuba a few weeks ago, would head “a dark espionage network that tries to undermine the interests of the United States” with the intention of supporting the image of the Russian president at a time when his authority was weakened by the uprising of the Wagner Group, review Cuban newspaper.
“The Putin-Patrushev strategy in the Americas is more than an effort to counter US support for democracy in Europe. The destabilization of Western democracy in the region is central to their common dream of restoring the world power of the Mother Russia,” says O’Grady.
Moscow would have an “obsession with quietly fueling anti-democratic ideology in other parts of the Americas, with little resistance from the United States,” and in that scheme Mexico would be “an especially valuable target” and warns that espionage there may be the most dangerous.
In this context, the text recalls that General Glen van Herck, commander of the United States Northern Command and the Aerospace Defense Command, declared in 2022 before a Senate committee that “most” of Russian intelligence personnel “in the world is in Mexico right now” and “keep a close eye on their opportunities to influence the opportunities and access of the United States.
“Russian intelligence activity in Mexico may be the most dangerous,” O’Grady emphasizes.
“In testimony on March 24, 2022 before the Senate Armed Services Committee, General Glen van Herck raised the alarm. ‘There are actors who are very aggressive and active throughout the Northern Command, (…) including the Bahamas and Mexico, China and Russia,” he stressed.
Patrushev last March incited an old source of conflict when he said that Mexico would recover “sooner or later” the lands it lost to the United States in 1848. Along these lines, he said that the United States enriched itself by seizing territories and exploiting towns, a I try to refresh the old wound.
But O’Grady questioned whether Patrushev could succeed in that regard, as he assured that the Russian spy “will go to his grave trying to achieve it.”
Patrushev is a former intelligence agent. Between 1999 and 2008, he was head of the FSB, the former KGB, and is credited with bringing Putin to power. “He is Putin’s top spy, roaming the globe to help quell color revolutions, stage elections and challenge the unipolar multilateral system that has taken hold since the collapse of the Soviet Union,” O’Grady says.
Patrushev visited Venezuela in February, and met with the dictator Nicolás Maduro; In March he was in Cuba and spoke with the ruler Miguel Díaz-Canel and Raúl Castro, and he has strong ties in Nicaragua with the Daniel Ortega regime.
It would also have affected Colombia, where two Russian spies were expelled in 2020 and Moscow was accused of launching a disinformation campaign in the 2022 presidential race in favor of Gustavo Petro.
Days ago, the Argentine outlet Infobae indicated that the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador approved the entry into that country of 36 new Russian diplomats, many of them probably after having been expelled from Europe.
According to the report, before the start of the invasion of Ukraine, there were 49 Kremlin diplomatic officials in Mexico, but after the recent incorporations that number would have risen to 85. Now, the Moscow embassy in the Mexican capital is the one with the largest staff in that country, surpassing even that of the US, the neighbor to the north and Mexico’s main trading partner.
John Feeley, a former US ambassador and security specialist, said that “the number of Russian diplomats in Mexico would not make any sense if what they were doing was traditional embassy work.”
“The spies almost always have diplomatic cover,” he remarked.
This happens just after it was learned that the Russian Embassy in Cuba houses an espionage center in which dozens of Russian officers and agents carry out actions against the US using diplomatic cover.
FUENTE: CUBA DAILY
