Under the guise of diplomats and officials at the Russian Embassy in Havana A network of dozens of agents from the military intelligence service (GRU) and the Kremlin’s foreign intelligence service (SVR) operates out of Cuba. a spy center that would have served Moscow to oversee anti-US surveillance operations conducted from the Lourdes spy base until two decades ago.
According to a comprehensive report by The Insider, a magazine specializing in investigative journalism, fact-checking and political analysis based in Riga, Latvia, In the capital of the island, employees of the GRU and graduates of Russian universities related to rocket science, computer technology and mathematics workwho would have been secretly transferred to Cuba.
The authors of the report They located several GRU agents in Havana using the online lists of students at the Russian Embassy’s school in Cubawhose parents, it turned out, were not diplomats but professional special services officers specializing in electronic intelligence and related fields such as missiles.
In charge of the Kremlin spy station in Havana, according to the report, would be the diplomatic headquarters’ military attaché, General Pyotr Kulikov, who appears with this position on the embassy’s official website, and the GRU’s main agent would be in Cuba.
Kulikov, chief of the Russian military attaché, reported to two other GRU officers working under the guise of embassy secretaries: Vitaly Grechukha, who was registered at the GRU headquarters address before his trip to Cuba, and Sergei Donets, who previously served there the Russian 38th Airborne Communication Control Brigade.
Grechukha participated in January 2022 the inauguration of a supposed astronomical observatory managed by the Cuban Institute of Geophysics and Astronomyaccording to a report by the Cuban state news agency.
According to this information, this first automated astronomical observatory will have “a telescope with greater range and precision for monitoring space debris, the weather and objects near the atmosphere” and a satellite positioning system receiver. All the technology would have been provided by the Institutes of Applied Astronomy (IPA) and Institute of Astronomy (INASAN), both of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Maritza García García, President of the Cuban Environment Agency, made the announcement for the report One of the next steps in Russian-Cuban cooperation in this area would be “the future creation of a modern astronomical observatory in Valles de Picadura”.in the neighboring province of Mayabeque, with the aim of conducting near- and deep-space astronomical observations and space geodesy.
In the case of Donets, according to The Insider, his brigade was transferred to Crimea shortly before the start of the invasion of Ukraine, in order to coordinate communications between the Russian army’s airborne units involved in the war.
The report also located Vitaly Kadyrko, father of a student at the Russian Embassy’s Education Center in Cuba. This would be a graduate of the Military Faculty of the Russian State Technical University, who worked at the Eurasian Nation’s Precision Instruments Research Institute, which is affiliated with Russia’s Roscosmos Federal Agency and the “Progress” Space and Missile Center.
Sergey Poddavashkin, whose daughter is in 10th grade at the Russian school in Havana, would be a graduate of Bauman Moscow State Technical University, where future agents are recruited for both the GRU and the Directorate of Scientific and Technical Intelligence of the SVR.
The Latvian medium points out that the husband of the embassy’s ministerial adviser Anna Vasenkova’s name is Sergei Vasenkov. It would be a graduate of the Moscow Institute of Radio, Electronics and Automation (MIREA) Faculty of Cybernetics, which trains specialists in the field of information security, systems analysis and aviation rocket science.
Remember The Insider Many MIREA graduates then work in the Russian special service.
Another cybernetician working in Havana is Vitaly Kondratenko, although he is listed as an official with the Russian trade mission in Cuba. His CV lists him as a graduate of the Department of Computational Cybernetics and Mathematics at Moscow State University.
He is joined by the head of Aeroflot’s Havana office, Yevgeny Voskoboinik, a graduate of the Russian Military Diplomatic Academy (VDA) and part of the alleged spy network operating under the guise of that airline.
It would be your job, the report said “Recruit Cubans” and also “Control passengers who fly to Havana on Russian planes and then on to the United States via Mexico”a migration route referred to by DIARIO DE CUBA days ago.
The insider wants to have located that too at least 37 Russian students from the school in Havana whose parents do not appear on the diplomatic sheet.
underneath, Alexander Utochkin, who served in the Klimovsk military unit 47747 in Russia before going to Havana. Some of the equipment from the Cuban espionage center in Lourdes would have been brought to this base.
Another agent with a son in the Russian school in Havana is Artem Polovnikovwho served in Vatutinki-1, a city in the Moscow Region where the GRU Main Space Reconnaissance Reception Center is located.
And that’s not all: the husband of the elementary school teacher Inna Mikhushchenko, Dimitry, is also a rocket scientist who studied at the Rostov Military Institute of the Rocket Forces, and later entered the VDA. Both he and Roman Lyubushkin, another Russian with children at school in Havana who is not on the diplomatic list, are described as “rockets” by The Insider.
In the case of Lyubushkin, he graduated from the Strategic Missile Forces Academy named after Peter the Great, and then began his service in the GRU. His and Polovnikov’s task would be to determine targets to attack with missiles. “Some Missile Academy graduates serve in the Defense Department’s Main Computing Center (MCC). They used to aim missiles at targets in Syria and now at Ukrainian cities,” says The Insider.
Finally, the website of the school in Havana mentions Stepán, who won the competition for the best presentation of children’s drawings “Crónica de la victoria”. His father is General Andrei Gushchin, who would lead a group of military specialists in Cuba. Oddly enough, This senior official was dispatched to Havana shortly after the social outburst of 9/11 to act as an adviser to the repressive apparatus?
“Now there is completely different software equipment and operating principles, and it is not necessary to keep thousands of ‘listeners’ in Cuba to listen to all frequencies. Thirty people are enough to spy on the United States and even reach Canada,” said a former soldier from the 309 GRU Directional Communications Center (military unit 34608), also based in Klimovsk, whose identity remains protected, the report said.
All of the above, The Insider concludes, suggests that Spy Center Lourdeswhich was located between 1967 and 2001 in the area where the University of Informatics (UCI) is now located, on the outskirts of Havana. It continues to operate with a secret command at the Kremlin’s diplomatic headquarters on the island. During its existence, Lourdes was under the command of the GRU and the PGU, the KGB unit responsible for foreign intelligence.
For decades, these facilities made it possible to intercept data from US communications satellites., phone calls and messages from NASA’s Mission Control Center in Florida. According to some reports, the endowment totaled around 3,000 agents, including civilians.
That’s what the insider remembers Since 2014 there have been rumors that the Russian spy station in Cuba has been reactivatednow with less visibility and a smaller team.
All of this is related to the strengthening of political, economic and military ties between Moscow and Havana in recent months, as well as frequent trips by senior officials from both governments between the two capitals.
In this plot, it is noticeable that in February 2023 Vladimir Putin appointed Viktor V. Koronelli as the new ambassador to Cuba, who, not coincidentally, was already stationed on the island between 1988 and 1992 at the Soviet diplomatic headquarters. and then as the representative of the Russian Federation between 1994 and 1999.
The revelations come as Washington and Beijing clash over allegations, and US intelligence sources leaked information proving that China operates a spy base on Cuban territory. According to the above, Moscow has a great advantage.