How Russia Is Recruiting Cubans To Fight In Ukraine 1

Photo-illustration by Lon Tweeten for TIME Images: Alain Pararazzi Cubano / YouTube, Facebook, CyberResistance UA / Telegram

BY VERA BERGENGRUEN 

SEPTEMBER 18, 2023 6:00 AM EDT

Alex Vegas Díaz was surprised to find himself sleeping next to Russian soldiers in a trench in Ukraine, more than 6,000 miles from home. In his telling, the skinny 19-year-old Cuban accepted an offer posted on WhatsApp to make good money doing “construction work” for the Russian military. Instead, he and a friend were taken to a base, outfitted with weapons, and sent against their will to the front lines of a war they never intended to join.

“What is happening in Ukraine is ugly—to see people with their heads open before you, to see how people are killed, feel the bombs falling next to you,” Vegas Díaz said in an Aug. 31 video, speaking from a Russian hospital, where he said he was recovering from an illness before being sent back to the front. “Please, please help get us out of here.”

The plea for help went viral. Similar stories began to surface, as Cubans posted online and called into talk shows to ask for information about family members who had also flown to Moscow to join the Russian military. The outcry eventually prompted the Cuban government to issue a striking allegation: a “human trafficking network” operating out of Russia was luring young Cubans to enlist to fight in Ukraine. On Sept. 8, Cuban officials said they had arrested 17 people in connection with the alleged trafficking scheme. They could face up to 30 years in prison for engaging in mercenary activity, which is against Cuban law.

But social-media posts, audio messages, and videos from recruits in Russia reviewed by TIME, along with interviews with family members and documents obtained by a Ukrainian hacker group that corroborate their identities, combine to tell a very different story. They indicate that Vegas Díaz became caught up in a large, organized operation that has openly recruited hundreds of Cuban volunteers to fight in Moscow’s increasingly depleted army since July. They also suggest that the trafficking allegations may be an attempt by the Cuban government, a longtime ally of Russia, to maintain its stated neutrality on the war in Ukraine, four Cuba experts and former U.S. officials tell TIME.

Feature continues here: Havana Human Trafficking

Cuba Accuses Russia Of Quietly Recruiting Its Citizens Into The War In Ukraine 3

By NPR’s Morning Edition

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

It sounds like a chapter out of a Cold War-era novel. Cuba says a covert and, as of yet, unnamed group has been recruiting citizens living on the island and in Russia to fight in the ongoing war in Ukraine. The Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs says it is working to dismantle the ring and bring those responsible to justice. Thus far, Moscow, Cuba’s one-time communist ally, has been quiet. Here to help us understand what this all means is Chris Simmons, a former counterintelligence officer whose expertise is Cuban spy craft. Welcome, Chris, to the program.

CHRIS SIMMONS: Thank you for having me.

FADEL: So what’s your sense of why Cuba is making this accusation so publicly?

SIMMONS: I think the easy – short explanation is because they got caught, once again. This is just the latest in a long series of criminal enterprises run by the Cuban government. And any time they’ve gotten caught, historically, their first act is to deny it and then imprison some individuals as proof that they had no knowledge.

FADEL: So really covering their tracks, in your view?

SIMMONS: Correct. And this has been – this type of endeavor has been going on for about 60 years, starting with terrorist support and then them serving as the proxies for intelligence efforts on behalf of Russia and others, drug trafficking. So it’s just – it’s institutionalized criminal enterprise by the Havana government.

FADEL: Now, Cuba has made it very publicly clear, at least tried to say, that they have nothing to do with the war in Ukraine, that they had nothing to do with these recruits of Cubans to go fight in the war. Is that about placating the U.S. and telling the U.S., we’re not involved?

SIMMONS: It goes back to the – their deniability. Cuba is a police state, and they proudly boast that. A million Cuban residents are part of what’s called the Committees and Defense of the Revolution, which is essentially a neighborhood snitch program. So the idea that someone could be running a mercenary ring without the government’s knowledge is ludicrous. It’s absolutely impossible for major criminal enterprises to exist without the Cuban government’s knowledge and involvement.

FADEL: So it doesn’t ring true to you. But does the public announcement from Cuba suggest at all that there are cracks in the long relationship between Cuba and Russia?

SIMMONS: The – yes, because there was also – Cuba had good relations with the Ukraine as well. And so before this became public, there had been some intense media coverage, on island, debating the pros and cons of staying out of any aspect of the war in Ukraine, since both were allies.

Interview continues here: Cuba’s Human Trafficking

 

Growing Concerns As Russians Make Big Return To Cuba 1

Headquarters of Cuba’s dreaded Ministry of the Interior (MININT) [Photo — Havana Times

BY HANK TESTER, CBS Miami

MIAMI – “The Cuban government is desperate, they have no money, no gas, they have no food.”

That said by Otto Reich, the former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, former U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela and President of The Center for a Free Cuba.

Reich reacting to news that Russia and Cuba are renewing their relationship that all but disappeared after the Soviet Union dissolved in the late 1980’s.

Back in the 1970s and early 1980s, the Soviet Union was a big Cuba player, propping up the Castro Governments Communist based economy.

The Russians bailed when the Soviet Union fell apart.

Now, they say they are back with big promises and the Cuban’s are sweeting the pie.

Russia is offering Cuba great deals on gasoline, emergency donations of wheat, promises to build hotels, increase Russian tourism flows, and open retail stores stocked with Russian household products.

In return, Cuba will grant Russian entrepreneurs long term property leases.

Russian banks can open up, duty-free import of Russian equipment.

Russian business would be able to take profits out of the country.

“There is the promise to open a Russian vehicle assembly plant,” Reich is quick to mention.

“I am told they are sending personal to revamp the spy station,” he said.

The Russian operated an ease dropping spy station for years, then phased out their facility, but now may bring it back.

Cuba watchers say we should get ready for more Russian Naval Ships docking in the Port of Havana. With Russian long range bombers flying down the East Coast of the United States, landing in Cuba.

Russian Spy ships lingering just off the Atlantic territorial waters of the United States of America.

“They, the Russians, have always seen Cuba as a permeant aircraft carrier off the coast of the United States.”

Feature continues here: Russia’s Return to Cuba

Ana Belen Montes: Anachronistic Spy For Cuba 1

Austrian actress Lotte Lenya, playing Soviet Colonel Rosa Klebb in the film “From Russia with Love” (1963), one of the most remembered villains of the Bond saga. (Screen capture

14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 15 January 2023 –The spy is defined by an ability to keep a secret. The secret configures everything else — temperament, friendships, love, fear, sex and loyalty. The accumulation of confidential information makes the spy a danger to both sides. The expiration date depends on how quickly the secret changes hands. The vertigo of such a life has to be addictive.

For several weeks I was obsessed with the way in which the spy Ana Belén Montes had been shaped by the secret. It was, above all, a communication problem. Montes started from resentment against her country and a bulletproof loyalty for Castro. We know that she had been transmitting data to Havana since the eighties and that she met every day with her contact, like a disciplined reporting machine.

Her appearance couldn’t be more mediocre: short hair, office worker’s dark circles and cheap suits. It’s revealing that Havana has celebrated her release with such reluctance after twenty years in prison. Only the back benches of the regime showed some enthusiasm in their propaganda.

The release of Ana Belén Montes reminds the world of things that Havana would prefer not to reveal. For example, the fact that Cuba’s espionage network is still in action, although its scope is modest and its methods are outdated. One sees Montes and knows that at the end of the line Castro is waiting, in suspense, holding the phone. Both figures — Mata Hari and the Kaiser — are dinosaurs, parodies, relics of the Cold War.

If Montes were a villain in a James Bond movie, she would not be the blonde Tatiana Romanova but the repulsive Rosa Klebb. Unappetizing, Sean Connery would have avoided seducing her. I find it easier to see her behind an old Macintosh, downloading the Pentagon files on a floppy disk, while nervously drinking coffee.

Feature continues here: Anachronistic Ana

Now Russia is Suspected of Attacks Against Diplomats in Cuba. Will U.S. Strike Back? 6

File picture showing a vintage US car passing in front of the US Embassy in Havana on December 17, 2015. (Photo credit should read YAMIL LAGE/AFP/Getty Images)

By Nora Gámez Torres, ngameztorres@elnuevoherald.com

Cuba is again in the middle of what could be another confrontation between the United States and Russia, after Moscow was identified in a news report as the main suspect in the string of mysterious attacks against U.S. embassy personnel and relatives in Havana.

An NBC report quoting unidentified U.S. officials said federal agencies investigating the incidents have intercepted intelligence communications that point to Russian responsibility for the attacks, although the evidence is not conclusive enough to formally accuse Moscow.

But if a Russian role is confirmed, “that would be unprecedented. That’s never happened,” said Frank Mora, who served as deputy secretary of defense for Latin America and now heads the Kimberly Green Latin American and Caribbean Center at Florida International University.

“Russia has meddled in the U.S. elections and has been behind the attacks on former Russian spies in England, but to provoke serious injuries to U.S. officials, that is much more complicated and the United States has to react in some way,” he added.

Cuba is again in the middle of what could be another confrontation between the United States and Russia, after Moscow was identified in a news report as the main suspect in the string of mysterious attacks against U.S. embassy personnel and relatives in Havana.

An NBC report quoting unidentified U.S. officials said federal agencies investigating the incidents have intercepted intelligence communications that point to Russian responsibility for the attacks, although the evidence is not conclusive enough to formally accuse Moscow.

But if a Russian role is confirmed, “that would be unprecedented. That’s never happened,” said Frank Mora, who served as deputy secretary of defense for Latin America and now heads the Kimberly Green Latin American and Caribbean Center at Florida International University.

“Russia has meddled in the U.S. elections and has been behind the attacks on former Russian spies in England, but to provoke serious injuries to U.S. officials, that is much more complicated and the United States has to react in some way,” he added.

The NBC report said the U.S. military is working to replicate the weapon or weapons used to injure 26 employees of the State Department, the CIA and other federal agencies as well as relatives who were based in Havana. The victims suffered symptoms such as loss of hearing, cognitive problems and some experienced brain damage.

A team of doctors that investigated the incidents at the request of the U.S. government has said it’s possible the attackers used a “neuro-weapon” of directed energy that could damage the brain by causing a “cavitation” effect with ultrasonic, electromagnetic or microwaves. The U.S. Air Force research program on directed energy is participating in the investigation.

Article continues here:  Russians in Cuba?

 

How a Miami playboy, a Russian Gangster and a Cuban Spy Plotted to Buy a Soviet Submarine and Sell it to a Colombian Drug Cartel Reply

Exotic car dealer Juan Almeida, left, Cuban spy Nelson ‘Tony’ Yester, center, and Russian strip club owner and former mob enforcer Ludwig ‘Tarzan’ Fainberg, right, conspired to buy a submarine and sell it to the Cali cartel of Colombia

 

• Former mob enforcer and strip club owner Ludwig ‘Tarzan’ Fainberg,  exotic car importer Juan Almeida and Cuban immigrant Nelson ‘Tony’ Yester conspired
• The trio planned to buy a Soviet submarine for the Cali drug cartel of Colombia for the purposes of trafficking cocaine
• Tarzan and Tony even toured a Russian naval base and posed near a submarine with Russian military officers to show the cartel evidence the deal could be done
• Tony told the Cali cartel that he needed money in installments to broker the deal but absconded with $10million – and remains on the run
• Tarzan, a Russian immigrant, testified against Juan but recanted after he was deported to Israel – meaning none of the three remained behind bars
• Tarzan, Juan and fugitive Tony – as well as members of the law enforcement task force who tracked them – agreed to be interviewed for a new documentary
• The film is named for the task force, Operation Odessa, which was set up to monitor collaborations between Russian criminals and Colombian cartels
• Director Tiller Russell smuggled himself into a Panamanian prison and followed Tony to an undisclosed location in Africa during the making of the film
• Russell says he hopes the film is a ‘rock’n’roll thrill ride into the underworld, where you get a passport to a life and lifestyle and characters that you didn’t even imagine existed – much less having a ringside seat with them’

By Sheila Flynn For Dailymail.com

A large Russian man called Tarzan sits in an armchair against the backdrop of a cracked and stained wall, a pack of cigarettes, lighter and an ash tray on a table to his left, and he shrugs as he talks about a deal he tried to broker more than 20 years ago.

‘I had a friend of mine living in St. Petersburg, and I said, “Misha, tell me something,”’ Tarzan – real name Ludwig Fainberg – says in a heavy Russian accent. ‘”I know it’s gonna be a strange question. Is this possible, to buy a military submarine – used one?” And he said, “What a question! Let me check.”

‘He called me in two days and he asked me, do we want the submarine with missiles or without missiles?’ says Tarzan.

He raises his eyebrows and looks upwards to the left to emphasize just how flabbergasted he was with Misha’s counter question. But Tarzan – a seasoned wheeler-dealer, strip club owner and former mob enforcer – took it in his stride and went back to his partners with the response.

He was, after all, working with an American playboy in Miami and a fugitive Cuban spy to procure this submarine. And they were doing it on behalf of the notorious Cali drug cartel in Colombia, who planned to use the underwater vessel to smuggle cocaine undetected.

The entire situation sounds like something dreamed up for a Miami Vice-inspired action thriller, but it actually happened in the 1990s – and the trio came very close to pulling it off before one of them pocketed the cartel’s millions and went on the run.

Now the stranger-than-fiction story is brought to life in new documentary Operation Odessa, a film that’s closer to a roller-coaster ride than anything else and premieres on Showtime March 31.

Feature continues here:  Operation Odessa

 

Living and Loving the Cold War: The Wild Ride of a Canadian Diplomat and Spy Reply

Former Canadian high commissioner Bill Warden, centre, stands with his daughter, Lisa, in an arms bazaar in Darra, Pakistan, 1982. (Submitted by Lisa Warden)

From spying for the CIA and dodging the KGB, to rallying Afghan warlords, Bill Warden’s life was an adventure

(CBCNews – Canada) They don’t make careers like this anymore.

Dodging the secret police in Cold War Berlin. Cranking up the music to deafen the KGB bugs in Moscow. Spying for the CIA in Havana. Rallying Afghan warlords to thrash the Russians. Wrangling former prime minister Pierre Trudeau’s meditation session with Indira Gandhi. Faking documents to spirit a hostage out of Tehran.

Diplomacy is not designed to be a wild ride, but Bill Warden’s lasted three decades. He died in 2011, before his vivid journals were collected and published this fall by his daughter, Lisa, under the title, Diplomat, Dissident, Spook.

A sometime spy and eventual peacenik, Warden is little known to Canadians but well known to the likes of Mikhail Gorbachev, who writes a glowing forward to the book.

Roaming, off the radar, from Havana to Hong Kong, Warden relished the halcyon days of diplomacy when real spies wore fedoras and before, he says, ambassadors became trade commissioners. He watched the “Great Game” of the superpowers from the front row and didn’t mind jumping into the ring.

To all appearances, the polite Niagara Falls, Ont., kid was a dutiful member of the striped-pants set, patiently enduring the rants of Iranian mullahs or Fidel Castro.

But behind the scenes, his life was intrigue and adventure.

A typical chapter begins like this:

“Berlin, 1961. As I rounded the corner onto Unter den Linden and headed for the café, the black Wartburg sedan slid to a halt and four men in the black uniforms of the East German Security Service emerged looking as if they meant business. My back was drenched in instant perspiration.”

That’s where Bill Warden got his start, as a student in the world’s spy capital — ambling with fake nonchalance from the West to the​ Communist East, before the Berlin Wall was built. He rebuffed the CIA’s bid to recruit him and soon, RCMP officers back in Niagara Falls came to grill his father about why young Bill was spending so much time in the East.

Cockroaches and the KGB

His interest in fighting the Cold War was the reason — and he got his wish in his first Foreign Service posting: Moscow, in the tense aftermath of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.

Warden was constantly tailed by KGB goons, partly because he spoke Russian — so there was a danger he might learn something.

Article continues here:  Canadian Spy in Cuba

 

 

Donald Trump Crackdown Looms For Cuba as Repression Continues After Obama Outreach 3

Cuban President Raul Castro and his government have benefited more than his people from the Obama administration’s détente. (Associated Press)

By Dave Boyer – The Washington Times

President Obama’s historic move to normalize relations with Cuba hasn’t slowed repression by the Castro regime, and the incoming Trump administration is likely to take a tougher stand on restricting tourism, recovering stolen U.S. assets and demanding human rights reforms by Havana, analysts say.

In the two years since Mr. Obama announced a thaw in the United States’ half-century policy of isolating the island nation, the administration has paved the way for increased engagement, approving such measures as daily commercial flights, direct mail service, cruise ship ports of call and the reopenings of long-shuttered embassies in Washington and Havana.

But Mr. Obama’s policy has not been fully embraced on Capitol Hill and is vulnerable to reversal under the Trump administration, though the president’s aides say his détente is already bearing fruit in Cuba and beyond.

“We’re seeing real progress that is making life better for Cubans right now,” said White House Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes. “Sustaining this policy will allow for further opening, further travel, further U.S. business opportunities.”

But critics say the U.S. money now flowing to Cuba is being pocketed directly by the military and the Cuban intelligence services, not benefiting Cuban entrepreneurs. They also say the government of President Raul Castro has become more repressive since the formal resumption of diplomatic ties with Washington.

“This year, they’ve had over 10,000 politically motivated arrests,” said Ana Quintana, an analyst on Latin America at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “During President Obama’s visit [in March], there were 498 people arrested in those three days.”

Judging by the standards Mr. Obama laid out in December 2014, she said, “the policy has been a failure.”

“It was originally intended to help the Cuban people by providing greater freedoms,” Ms. Quintana said. “It’s been diluted, because they found that they’re not going to get the concessions from the Cuban government that they expected. The vast majority of people who have benefited from this have been the Cuban military and the Cuban government.”

President-elect Donald Trump is likely to take a less rosy view than Mr. Obama of the U.S. engagement with Cuba, say those familiar with his team’s thinking. During the presidential campaign, Mr. Trump criticized Mr. Obama and Democratic rival Hillary Clinton for “turning a blind eye” to Cuba’s human rights violations and denounced Mr. Obama’s initial deal with Havana as a “very weak agreement.” Several anti-Castro Cuban-American conservatives are part of Mr. Trump’s transition team.

Article continues here:  Espionage & Repression Continues

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Most Dangerous U.S. Spy You’ve Never Heard Of 4

Ana Montes with then-Deputy DCI George Tenet, after receiving an award.

By Thom Patterson, CNN

Programming note: Explore untold stories of American spies: CNN Original Series “Declassified” airs Sundays at 10 p.m. ET/PT only on CNN.

(CNN) — She put American combat troops in harm’s way, betrayed her own people and handed over so many secrets that experts say the U.S. may never know the full extent of the damage.

Ana Montes was the Queen of Cuba, an American who from 1985 to the September 11, 2001 attacks handed over U.S. military secrets to Havana while working as a top analyst for the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency.

But despite her crimes, Montes remains largely unknown.

You might not think Cuba could do much harm to a superpower like the U.S., said retired DIA official Chris Simmons, appearing on CNN’s “Declassified.”

But you’d be wrong.

The threat increases, he said, when Havana goes on to sell those U.S. military secrets to nations like China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela and North Korea.

Montes’ anger about U.S. foreign policy complicated her relationships and drew the attention of Cubans who enticed her to turn her back on friends, family and her own country.

The fascinating spycraft that surfaced from her case offers a rare glimpse into the invisible world of espionage, where some experts believe there could be as many as 100,000 foreign agents working inside the U.S.

The two Anas

Montes grew up like millions of other girls during the Cold War, in a large, middle-class family, the oldest of four children.

Born to Puerto Rican parents on a U.S. Army base in Germany in 1957, Montes‘ father served his country as an Army doctor. By the time Montes entered high school, her father had left the military and settled the family about an hour north of Washington, D.C., in Towson, Maryland.

She attended the University of Virginia, and in 1977 and 1978, she spent a liberating year studying in Spain. There, she met a Puerto Rican student named Ana Colon.

The two Anas quickly became friends — bonding through their Puerto Rican roots — not politics. “I had no political awareness whatsoever,” said Colon, now a Washington-area elementary school teacher.

Feature continues here:  Ana Montes

 

 

Moscow Building Spy Site in Nicaragua 1

Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega, right, and Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, attend a welcome ceremony at an airport in Managua, Nicaragua, Friday, July 11, 2014. (AP Photo/RIA-Novosti, Alexei Nikolsky, Presidential Press Service)

Signals intelligence facility part of deal for 50 Russian tanks

By Bill Gertz, Washington Free Beacon        

The Russian government is building an electronic intelligence-gathering facility in Nicaragua as part of Moscow’s efforts to increase military and intelligence activities in the Western Hemisphere.

The signals intelligence site is part of a recent deal between Moscow and Managua involving the sale of 50 T-72 Russian tanks, said defense officials familiar with reports of the arrangement.

The tank deal and spy base have raised concerns among some officials in the Pentagon and nations in the region about a military buildup under leftist Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega.

Disclosure of the Russia-Nicaraguan spy base comes as three U.S. officials were expelled from Nicaragua last week. The three Department of Homeland Security officials were picked up by Nicaraguan authorities, driven to the airport, and sent to the United States without any belongings.

State Department spokesman John Kirby said the expulsion took place June 14 and was “unwarranted and inconsistent with the positive and constructive agenda that we seek with the government of Nicaragua.”

“Such treatment has the potential to negatively impact U.S. and Nicaraguan bilateral relations, particularly trade,” he said.

The action is an indication that President Obama’s recent diplomatic overture to Cuba has not led to better U.S. ties to leftist governments in the region.

State Department officials had no immediate comment on the expulsion.

The action is an indication that President Obama’s recent diplomatic overture to Cuba has not led to better U.S. ties to leftist governments in the region.

Nicaragua’s Ortega has remained close to the communist Castro regime in Cuba and the leftist regime in Venezuela. He was once part of the communist Sandinista dictatorship, and after winning election as president in 2006 has shifted Nicaragua towards socialism.

No details of the intelligence site, such as its location and when it will be completed, could be learned.

However, the site could be disguised as a Russian GLONASS satellite navigation tracking station that is said to be nearing completion. GLONASS is the Russian version of the Global Positioning System network of satellites used for precision navigation and guidance.

Article continues here:  Russian SIGINT

Editor’s Note:  While the Russians and Cubans maintain an intelligence sharing agreement, it seems Moscow isn’t satisfied with what they are receiving from the Cuban SIGINT system headquartered at Bejucal. Or perhaps Chinese Intelligence, which has had personnel embedded at Bejucal for at least 15 years, isn’t interested in seeing an expanded Havana-Moscow relationship.