General Glen VanHerck, head of the US Northern Command, during his appearance before a Senate committee this Thursday Jose Luis Magana (AP)
The Russian Military Intelligence Agency (GRU) currently has more intelligence officers stationed on Mexican territory than any other country in the world, with the ultimate goal of influencing United States decisions. The head of the US Northern Command, Glen VanHerck, warned this Thursday. The general made the statements during a session of the Senate Armed Forces Committee, where he added that the Kremlin is keen to gain access to the US from the neighboring country. The information has surfaced virtually in tandem with claims made by US Ambassador Ken Salazar after an act opening the Mexico-Russia friendship group in the presence of Kremlin diplomats was held in the Chamber of Deputies on Wednesday, just about a month after Beginning of the invasion of Ukraine. “We must stand in solidarity with Ukraine and against Russia,” Salazar told Congress. “The Russian ambassador was there yesterday and said that Mexico and Russia are close, that can never happen,” he added.
In Washington, VanHerck has targeted Moscow’s operations from Mexico, where Russia has one of its largest embassies in Latin America. “Currently, most of the GRU troops in the world are in Mexico. These are Russian intelligence agents,” he assured. The military wanted to make it clear that these agents “are on the lookout for any opportunity through which they can influence the United States.” Here’s how the four-star general responded to questions from senators on the Armed Services Committee. “You have actors like China and Russia that are very aggressive and active throughout Northern Command’s sphere of responsibility, including the Bahamas and Mexico,” VanHerck said in his response to Republican Senator Mike Rounds.
It is not the first time that the military has expressed this sentiment. VanHerck pointed out last September that Russia posed the greatest threat to the United States. “Russia is the greatest military threat to my homeland. It’s not China, it’s Russia,” said the military man, who sees China as a “long-term threat” but Russia has greater military power.
The Russian intelligence agency, also known as the GRU, has been implicated in some of the most controversial actions attributed to Russia by the West in recent years and has its own special forces brigades abroad. The organization, which is part of the armed forces of the Russian Federation and prior to those of the Soviet Union, is one of several groups authorized, along with other agencies that succeeded the KGB, to spy for the Russian government.
Testifying before the SASC today, Gen. VanHerck emphasized the many simultaneous challenges @NORADcommand & USNORTHCOM has faced strategic competitors who have openly stated their intention to endanger our homelands in order to advance their own interests. pic.twitter.com/6neoRxdv4S
— US Northern Command (@USNorthernCmd) March 24, 2022
According to the head of the US Northern Command, the instability created in Mexico by drug cartels means that Russian or Chinese spies can easily threaten US national security. “In this hemisphere, transnational criminal organizations operate almost unhindered, opening a path of corruption and violence that creates a void that allows China and Russia to interfere in these countries,” he commented.
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The GRU was founded in 1918 by order of the Red Army’s Revolutionary Military Council, headed by Leon Trotsky, and its initial aim was to coordinate the actions of the army’s intelligence agencies, but for several decades its existence was unknown to foreign intelligence agencies. The agency survived the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The number of agents the GRU has on its payroll is unknown and it is accused, among other things, of interfering in the presidential election that gave Donald Trump victory in 2016 by trying , a coup in Montenegro, launching cyberattacks on the World Anti-Doping Agency and the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in the UK in 2018.
The US criticizes the signs of solidarity with Russia in the Mexican Congress
In Mexico, Salazar has questioned the decision by some MPs from Morena (Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s political formation), the Labor Party (PT, also part of the governing bloc) and the Institutional Revolutionary Party to use a pro-Russian group to fully invade Ukraine. “I remember that in World War II there was no distance between Mexico and the United States, we were united against Hitler, who was killing innocents everywhere,” the US ambassador said at the opening of another friendship group in the House of Commons, that of Mexico and the United States.
Under other circumstances, the so-called circles of friendship would probably have gone unnoticed, disguised as purely ceremonial acts. In the midst of the war in Ukraine, the group’s creation with Russia was controversial and harshly criticized by the opposition, who called the decision “reckless” and “odious”. The inauguration was the gateway to the Mexican Congress, in an official act, to the Russian version of the armed conflict, branded as propaganda in the West and opposed by 140 countries in the United Nations General Assembly, including Mexico, which “strongly” condemned the Russian aggression at the end of February.
“Russia didn’t start this war, it’s ending it,” said Russian Ambassador Viktor Koronelli. Koronelli argued that the Ukrainian army is “using women and children as human shields,” condemned “the fake news” prevalent in the West, and insisted on the need to “denazify Ukraine.” “We appreciate the pertinent information given to us about the conflict in Ukraine,” said Alberto Anaya, a PT MP and leader of the pro-Russia group. Opposition members gave up their place in the so-called “Friendship with Russia” group, and others justified it as showing solidarity between peoples and not between governments. “We respect the position of the Mexican government,” Koronelli said. “Our relationship with Mexico is strategic in nature and based on mutual respect for national interests,” he added.
While some Mexican politicians are reluctant to share the official position of opposing the war ordered by Vladimir Putin’s government, the White House is urging that there are no cracks in Mexico’s position. For Washington, Mexico is a key country in Latin America, a region where Russia has found international support it doesn’t have in other regions of the world, and which gives it allies like the government of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela or Miguel Díaz-Canel in Cuba or Daniel Ortega’s Nicaragua.
Between suspicions of espionage and mutual propaganda accusations, two formal acts in Mexico have sparked controversy and sparked outrage thousands of miles away from the armed conflict. In a region used to watching the power games from afar. And that in a country that has so far left no doubt about its position against the Russian offensive.
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