RUSSIA HAS SUCCEDED NOT ONLY IN REBUILDING THE
FORMER SOVIET UNION'S POSITION IN CUBA BUT ALSO
IN DRAMATICALLY IMPROVING IT
by Colonel Stanislav Lunev
Today's Cuba is one of the last strongholds of old-style communism. After the U.S.S.R. collapsed nine years ago and international communism suffered major setbacks elsewhere, it survives on the so-called freedom island and shows no signs of disappearing in the near future.
As is typical for totalitarian rule, everything in Cuba is under government control. Virtually all daily activities of Cuban citizens are dictated by the communist iron fist. No time is wasted on explaining to people the reasons behind the countless rules and regulations that are forced upon them. Blind obedience to endless restrictions is non-negotiable. The rights and liberties that Americans take for granted are nonexistent. There are no freedoms of speech, assembly, travel, education or choice in Cuba.
Despite these ugly verities, with support from Communist China and "democratic" Russia, the Cuban regime is again strengthening its position in the Latin American countries by means of anti-American propaganda in addition to more aggressive strategies.
The Russian paper Izvestia has the following to report on Cuba’s recent past:
"For nearly three decades Cuba ranked first among all foreign countries in terms of the density of agents of Moscow's two intelligence services per square kilometer of its territory. This island right under America’s nose was used as an ideal bridgehead for electronic monitoring and as a base for sending agents into Latin American countries.
"Right up until the end of the eighties Soviet agents in Cuba observed carefully as Castro's military and political intelligence services carried out terrorist acts on a wide scale from Argentina to Canada, not shrinking from attacks on banks and the kidnapping of major industrialists, and trained entire rebel armies on Cuban territory.
"With the start of the collapse of the U.S.S.R., Castro had to curtail these operations – the money stopped arriving from Moscow. However, a Russian radio-electronic center continues to operate on the island to this day."
According to a joint statement by the Russian defense and foreign ministries, the radio-electronic center's purpose is to track American missiles and maintain communications with Russian embassies in Latin America. Its most important task, however, is the overall monitoring of activities in the United States. Much of this is done from the Lourdes Center (Lourdes is a suburb of Havana). It is actually located at several points in both western and eastern parts of the island.
Izvestia reported further that "the U.S. always regarded the Russian military presence on the island with great jealousy but does not object in principle to the continuing existence of the electronic center in Cuba, which Washington regards as a counterweight to an analogous American station in Turkey."
Russian policy is committed to preserving its presence in Cuba. With secret assistance from Western collaborators, Russia has succeeded not only in rebuilding the former Soviet Union's position in Cuba but also in dramatically improving it.
Despite the R.F.’s (Russian Federation’s) financial collapse, Kremlin leaders are able annually to come up with hundreds of millions of dollars to help Cuba complete its nuclear power plant at Juragua, the construction of which was begun by the former U.S.S.R.
The ostensible reason for the Russian assistance is to help Cuba save about 4.9 million barrels of oil per year, to alleviate the country’s energy crisis and to help Castro repay a $20 billion debt to the R.F., as the Soviet Union’s main successor.
In truth, however, the completion of this nuclear plant will give the Kremlin a permanent presence in the Western Hemisphere and allow it to blackmail the United States with the ever-present threat of a nuclear "accident" 180 miles south of the Florida Keys. Such an accident could be orchestrated at any time deemed advantageous to R.F. leaders.
The Juragua power plant allows Russia to establish a military beachhead in this highly geostrategic area, where it can easily station a wide array of military forces. This military presence will be directed not only against the United States but also against most, if not all, of the Atlantic allies.
Presently Russia has only a limited military presence in Cuba, due to American policies in this area and to Russia’s economic difficulties. Nevertheless, Russia and Cuba are now actively intensifying their cooperative efforts, while the Russian SIGINT station at Lourdes continues its usual activities.
In sum, these developments provide the foundation for a massive deployment of Russian forces to Cuba whenever the Kremlin-Castro axis feels it is to their benefit.
Controlled and operated by the G.R.U. (Russian Military Strategic Intelligence Agency), the Lourdes station maintains a radio-intelligence field over the Atlantic Ocean and collects cyber-intelligence data in close cooperation with Russian military spy satellites and naval and air force reconnaissance.
The Lourdes station penetrates coded and ciphered radio-technical signals in the eastern part of the United States and tracks the patrol routes of U.S. nuclear subs around the Atlantic. But the station is providing the Russian military also with extremely important economic data about the United States and other Atlantic Rim countries.
The strategic importance of the Lourdes Station has grown substantially since a secret order was issued by former President Yeltsin on Feb. 7, 1996, that requires Russian intelligence to intensify the theft of American and other Western trade and manufacturing secrets
This military and domestic espionage presents a formidable threat to the United States. If there are still those who remain skeptical, to quote his own words, "America’s friend in the Kremlin" Yeltsin ordered his secret agents "to close the technology gap with the West and to make better use of industrial espionage."
The existence of the Lourdes SIGINT station is, nevertheless, well known to the West. But it is only one of a number of secret Russian military presences in Cuba. The others have still maintained a successful cover. Only a very limited number of intelligence specialists are aware that the Lourdes station is merely a part of the Russian intelligence operations in Cuba, which are under the general command of the main G.R.U. center on the island.
This center, located near Havana, exists in addition to the G.R.U. field office, which operates out of the R.F. Embassy. The operatives in the center, as well as those of the embassy, have as their chief assignment the recruitment of people from the Latin American countries. They train and send them to the United States, Canada and other areas of the world to spy against America and its allies. The Russian-intelligence presence in Cuba comprises hundreds of highly trained professionals.
In addition to G.R.U. operations, the S.V.R. (formerly the K.G.B.) has its own separate field office, intelligence center and other intelligence stations. Hundreds of S.V.R. intelligence officers in Cuba are doing the same job as the G.R.U. agents, and their primary target is penetrating secrets of America as well as those of its allies. Thus, the R.F. is willing to pay any price to keep the Castro regime in power.
The new Russian elite considers Cuba an invaluable trans-shipment nexus for drug trafficking from the so-called Golden Triangle and Central Asia to the American continent. Moscow’s Komsolmolskaya Pravda (July 1995) disclosed that Cuba is an essential linchpin in the drug operations of the most powerful Russian financial and industrial consortia, created in the 1990s by former K.G.B. officers with former K.G.B. and Communist Party money.
This organization is headed by a four-star general, who was the first-deputy K.G.B. chief and boss of the Fifth K.G.B. Main Directorate. He is known for persecuting Soviet dissidents. His former K.G.B. officers took control of, and expanded, the drug route from Afghanistan to the United States and Western Europe via the Trans-Caucasus and Russia.
These former K.G.B. officers, the Moscow paper noted, linked up with other former K.G.B. men working in drug-producing areas of Laos, Burma, Cambodia and Korea and with the K.G.B. stationed at Camran Bay, Vietnam. They then set up a shipment chain between Cuba and these regions and the drug lords in Italy, Romania and Colombia.
The Castro regime has not shed its totalitarian nature and it never will. In addition to Russian aid it is being bolstered by support from other totalitarian and rogue states. These countries all have one major characteristic in common – they hate the United States and see Cuba as a springboard for their anti-American purposes. It isn't easy to assess the scope of these influences; but, in the words of the Russian newspaper Segodnya, the Kremlin has proclaimed that "Russia needs the Freedom Island again."
With Moscow's ongoing rapprochement with Cuba, the prominent military analyst Pavel Felgengauer, well known for his high-level R.F. military-defense contacts, stated in the same article, "If NATO seriously contemplates deploying its nuclear weapons in Poland, our nuclear missiles may reappear in Cuba."
Russia continues to play its game of giving with one hand and taking with the other. Despite the reduction in the size of its nuclear arsenal, it is not only using Western dollars to upgrade its nuclear-missile and other military technology, but also is threatening to re-deploy its weaponry on the soil of our nearest Atlantic neighbor. Yet many Americans would like to "normalize" relations with this neighbor.
In reality, however, so-called normalization boils down to the usual common denominator, "money." Normalization – i.e., accommodation of Castro despotism – means big bucks for profit-hungry businessmen in the short term, but would seriously weaken the United States in the long term. In the latter case no one wins, for no one will prosper in the second-rate, subjugated America that will be the final result.
Let us hope we will not help fulfill Lenin’s prophecy by selling communist dictators the "rope" with which to hang us.
END
Stanislav Lunev
February 2, 2000
Col. Lunev wrote an amazing and disturbing book,
"Through the Eyes of the Enemy."
