Photo caption,
Strange symptoms first became known after complaints from diplomats at the US Embassy in Cuba in 2016
April 1, 2024
A mysterious illness that has struck American diplomats in recent years may be linked to the work of a Russian intelligence unit, investigative journalists say. The Kremlin called their publication an unfounded accusation.
An international group of journalists said they were able to trace a connection between the movements of agents of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian Ministry of Defense (GRU) and cases of “Havana syndrome”, in which employees of American security agencies and diplomatic missions complained of a loud, painful sound in the head, dizziness, loss of orientation and other unusual symptoms.
The Insider publication (in Russia declared an “undesirable organization” and a “foreign agent”), as well as the 60 Minutes program of the American television company CBS and Spiegel magazine published the results of their investigation on Monday night.
They claim that they were able to obtain evidence of coincidences between the dates of travel of employees of the GRU military unit of military unit 29155 with cases of “Havana syndrome”.
The journalists’ investigation claims that on at least several occasions, operatives of the Russian military intelligence unit may have been near diplomatic missions when American employees encountered unexplained symptoms.
According to publications, Alexander Mishkin and Denis Sergeev, GRU officers whom British authorities suspect of involvement in the Novichok poisoning of former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, could also take part in such operations.
The publications say that two victims of the “Havana syndrome” recognized in the photographs people whom journalists called GRU employees (we are not talking about Mishkin and Sergeev).
Beginning in 2016, American diplomats and intelligence officers working in different countries began to complain of illness with strange symptoms.
Diplomats and intelligence agencies suspected that this was caused by some hostile actions on the part of Russia, China or other countries.
However, in March 2023, US intelligence agencies published a report in which they called it “extremely unlikely” that the mysterious illnesses of American diplomats were associated with the actions of hostile forces.
The authors of the new investigation express the hope that the US authorities will now have information that will allow them to make new arguments.
Moscow has already rejected suspicions against it. “This is all nothing more than a baseless, unfounded accusation by the media,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
“For many years now, the topic of the so-called “Havana syndrome” has been discussed in the press, and most often from the very beginning it was somehow linked to accusations from the Russian side of this. But no one has ever published or expressed any convincing evidence of these unfounded accusations,” Peskov said.
Representatives of the White House and the FBI gave comments to CBS News in which, without mentioning the findings of the investigations, they said that they will continue to closely study abnormal incidents with the health of employees.
In total, since 2016, more than 200 American diplomats working in Asia, Europe, and South America have complained about the “Havana syndrome.”
American employees, including the White House, CIA and FBI, complained of dizziness, headaches, difficulty concentrating and an intense and painful sound in the ears. There have been more than 1,000 reports of the mysterious illness, with dozens of cases still officially considered unexplained.
The US has passed legislation aimed at supporting victims of this syndrome, and people with confirmed injuries are eligible for payments.
It has long been suspected that the victims were exposed to directed energy or microwaves released by hidden devices, a possibility acknowledged in an earlier US intelligence report.
American military investigator Greg Edgreen, who studies cases of the syndrome, told 60 Minutes that he believes the common connection between victims of the syndrome is the “Russian connection”: “There was some point where they worked against Russia and succeeded.”
He also said the official bar for proof of Russian involvement in the US is set too high because his country does not want to “face a very hard truth.”
