After a journalistic investigation accused the Russian military intelligence agency of being behind the mysterious “Havana Syndrome“, which has affected diplomats and spies from U.S Around the world, the Kremlin denied all allegations this Monday, the 1st, calling them “unfounded” and “without evidence”.
The investigation
Early Monday, Insider, a Russia-focused investigative news portal based in Riga, the capital of Latvia, reported that members of a branch of Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), known as Unit 29155 , had been positioned in locations where health incidents involving American government employees had occurred.
The Insider report, which lasted a year, in collaboration with the journalistic program 60 Minutes, from the American broadcaster CBS News, and the German newspaper Der Spiegelalso reported that senior officials from Unit 29155 received rewards and promotions for work related to the development of “non-lethal ultrasonic weapons.”
Insider added that the use of the disease as a weapon first occurred in 2014 in Frankfurt, Germany, “when a United States government employee at the local consulate was knocked out by something resembling a strong beam of energy.”
“Unfounded accusations”
In response, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated this Monday that, in addition to the press “exaggerating” when it comes to the supposed “Havana Syndrome”, the accusations against the Russian government were “unfounded”.
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“This is not a new topic; For many years the so-called ‘Havana Syndrome’ was exaggerated in the press, and from the beginning it was linked to accusations against the Russian government,” Peskov told reporters when asked about the Insider report.
“But no one has ever published or expressed any convincing evidence of these baseless accusations anywhere.” “Therefore, all of this is nothing more than baseless and baseless accusations from the media.”
What is “Havana Syndrome”?
In 2016, several employees at the United States embassy in the Cuban capital, Havana, reported becoming ill, with symptoms including migraines, nausea, memory lapses and dizziness. Since then, a number of other American diplomats and spies have claimed to have suffered from the same illness.
To address the problem, in 2021 the United States Congress passed the Havana Act, authorizing the State Department, CIA and other government agencies to provide payments to employees and their families affected by the mysterious disease. However, an American intelligence investigation, the findings of which were released last year, concluded that it was “very unlikely” that a foreign adversary was responsible for the disease.
