The US gave Mexico a list of Russian spies. Mexico let them stay
When a U.S. general publicly declared that Mexico was a haven for Russian spies, Mexico's then-president immediately dismissed it.
“We have no information about that,” said President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to journalists the next day, in March 2022.
It was not true.
His top advisers had received repeated warnings from Washington about Russia's increasing covert activities in Mexico, according to nine current and former U.S. and Mexican officials. In fact, López Obrador had been directly briefed on the problem, according to three of the U.S. officials familiar with those conversations.
The CIA had even compiled a list of more than two dozen Russian spies posing as diplomats, but Mexican officials refused to expel them from the country, five of those people said.
Several of those people commented that there was an important promise that the United States did get from Mexico in 2023: Under pressure, Mexico agreed to let U.S. officials weigh in on Russians applying for diplomatic credentials, and they have turned some of them away.
But even after a new president was sworn in in Mexico last fall, Russian spies already in the country were not expelled, according to six current and recently departed officials.
“The Mexican government helped, but it could have done a lot more,” said Juan González, director of Western Hemisphere affairs. of the National Security Council during the Biden administration. "We gave them names of Russian spies posing as diplomats at the embassy in Mexico City. These were experienced spies, who had participated in sophisticated operations throughout Europe."
Mexico's proximity to the United States and the cover that tourism provides for spies to operate has allowed Moscow to significantly intensify its espionage activities in the country in recent years, US authorities say. Moscow can fly spies and informants from the United States to beach destinations like Cancun, which millions of Americans visit each year, providing a convincing cover that raises few suspicions.
According to authorities, the spies and their contacts meet among tourists, sunbathers and surfers, and pass along intelligence obtained in the United States while using Mexico to evade sophisticated U.S. surveillance systems. Washington.
Russia is also increasing its disinformation efforts, especially on the internet, to turn Mexicans against the United States and Europe, which has caused British and French officials to express their concerns to Mexico's Foreign Ministry, officials said.
These efforts led to the embassy of the United States in Mexico City to appoint its first Russia observer this summer, and the French embassy to create a position dedicated to disinformation.
The Mexican government declined to comment.
The Russian embassy said in an email that Russian diplomatic missions were “frequently the subject of unfounded accusations of espionage” and that Russia and Mexico have maintained “a wide range of bilateral relations.”
No It is unclear whether the United States continues to push for expulsions under President Donald Trump, whose Russia policy has oscillated between courting the Kremlin and threatening it.
But Trump has essentially resurrected the Monroe Doctrine, officials and officials say. analysts, trying to reaffirm Washington's supremacy on the American continent. U.S. officials say that has given them some guidance to ensure that actors like Russia and China do not gain a foothold in the region.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
In recent years, Moscow has also sent high-level officials to the region, including Nikolai Patrushev, head of Russia's Security Council and a longtime aide to President Vladimir Putin.
“The importance of this region to Russia is growing rapidly,” last year. “They are countries that are at the forefront of the fight for the true sovereignty of Latin America.”
‘The Vienna of Latin America’
Russia has long used Mexico as a base of espionage operations, earning it the nickname “the Vienna of Latin America” during the Cold War. But U.S. officials say those efforts intensified after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
That year, the United States and its European allies expelled more than 100 agents from their countries. Russian intelligence. Dozens of Russians had already been expelled from embassies and consulates a few years earlier, following the poisoning of a former Russian spy in the United Kingdom. Mexico, according to eight current and former Western officials. Several of the officials interviewed by The New York Times spoke on condition of anonymity because they had not been authorized to speak publicly.
The U.S.-led push to support Ukraine, they said, prompted the Kremlin's need for more intelligence on Washington, and some of Russia's most skilled intelligence agents are now based in Mexico's capital.
The agents face little resistance, officials said, because Mexico's counterintelligence agencies are more focused on domestic issues, such as drug traffickers, and have less experience in foreign espionage activities.
“If you're going to manage and recruit spies, proximity is key, and that's what Mexico offers,” said Duyane Norman, who was the CIA's chief of operations in Latin America until he withdrew in 2019. “Russia can act with greater impunity in Mexico: there are not as many eyes on them as in the United States or Canada.”
Only a few cases have come to light, among them that of a Mexican citizen, Héctor Alejandro Cabrera Fuentes, who was arrested in 2020 trying to board a flight from Miami to Mexico. In Florida, prosecutors said, Fuentes had attempted to gather information about a confidential U.S. source who had “provided information about the Russian government to the U.S. government.” He declined to comment.
CIA files and US warnings
Although most of the operations remained hidden, some signs of Russian interest are in plain sight.
The embassy in Mexico City is one of Russia's largest in the world, with 85 diplomats, even though Mexico and Russia have few cultural, military or economic ties. In contrast, Mexico has 16 diplomats in its Moscow embassy, according to its Foreign Ministry.
The CIA has assembled extensive files on people assigned to the Russian embassy, with details of their previous positions and specific spy operations in Europe and the United States, according to three US officials briefed separately by the agency.
Since 2022, US officials have expressed concern about Russian spies to Mexico's president, foreign secretary Foreign Affairs and other authorities “on multiple occasions,” said González, a former Biden administration official. Another U.S. official said the same concerns were raised with the government of Mexico's current president, Claudia Sheinbaum, who took office last fall.
Other U.S. officials who raised the list said that when they followed up, they were told that Mexican officials had never received it, that the list was too vague to act on, or that lower-ranking officials had misplaced it.
Finally, Gen. Glen VanHerck, head of the U.S. Northern Command, expressed concern in public testimony before the López Obrador ignored the general's remarks. By late 2022, Washington was so concerned about increasing Russian espionage that Wendy Sherman, then deputy secretary of state, raised the issue with Mexico's foreign secretary, according to several people with knowledge of the meeting. (Sherman declined to comment.) Marcelo Ebrard, then foreign affairs secretary, tried to downplay the concerns, these people said, saying that the Russians on Washington's list were “not a problem.” Sherman responded: “They are a problem. We know it, we kicked a lot of them out of Washington and now they are here.” Ebrard promised to investigate, the people with knowledge of the meeting said. But each time U.S. diplomats followed up, Foreign Affairs officials claimed they had never received the list.
Ebrard declined to comment, and López Obrador's aides said he was not speaking to the media.
Over the next year, Washington's concern grew as hundreds of thousands of migrants, including Russians, congregated at the U.S.-Mexico border.
The Biden administration was concerned. that Russia could plant spies among them, and sent Liz Sherwood Randall, the top national security adviser, to raise the issue with Mexican officials in several meetings, including with the president of Mexico, according to two people with knowledge of the conversations. Sherwood-Randall declined to comment.
Mexico said it would monitor Russian asylum seekers, according to those people, and alert U.S. officials to any suspicious behavior.
'One of Moscow's top priorities'
As U.S. officials pressured Mexico to take action against spies, they also struggled to get cooperation on the world stage, even though the country is an important security ally. and trade.
Mexico initially voted at the United Nations to condemn the Russian invasion, but has not sent aid to Ukraine nor imposed sanctions on Russia. And while the United States tried to isolate Russia, Mexican legislators formed a Mexico-Russia “friendship committee” and its president defended a Russian military unit participating in a Mexican parade in 2023.
Sheinbaum, Mexico's current president, has largely maintained the country's longstanding policy of neutrality, in which she preserves relations with countries like Russia and Venezuela despite American pressure.
Under Sheinbaum's mandate, Mexico voted this year at the UN in favor of reaffirming Ukraine's sovereignty. But when the Group of 7 later met in Canada, it did not meet with Ukraine's president, according to two people familiar with the matter, and Ukraine's foreign minister did not speak with Mexico's foreign minister at the U.N. General Assembly this week. fall.
In contrast, Mexico's top diplomat met with Russia's foreign minister this summer in Brazil, and the officials expressed cordial relations and mutual interests.
Mexico's tolerance toward Russia, according to U.S. officials, may reflect the policies of its ruling party, Morena, which dominates the federal government. The party includes a wide range of politicians, but at its core are many fervent left-wing politicians who deeply distrust the United States for its history of invasions, coups d'état, and influence campaigns in Latin America.
Morena officials did not respond to a request for comment.
Russia has also openly courted countries in the region. During his tour last year, Patrushev pledged to help countries curb American influence, saying that good ties with Latin American governments were “one of Moscow's top priorities.”
But covert activities are critical, experts say, and are not limited to Mexico. For years, the Kremlin used Brazil as a launching pad for elite intelligence agents, and used allies such as Cuba and Venezuela as centers of operations.
If the United States supported Ukraine, then Russia had reasoned that “would start messing” with America’s neighbors, said Norman, the former CIA official. “Mexico is the gateway to Latin America, and the Russians know it.”
Galia García Palafox and Emiliano Rodríguez Mega contributed reporting from Mexico City, and Milana Mazaeva from Tbilisi, Georgia.
Maria Abi-Habib is an investigative correspondent based in Mexico City and covers Latin America.