Nova Scotia Cuba Association

Belly of the Beast    ​ English Newsletters Archives

Cuba hosts Russian and Chinese spy bases

Cuba hosts Russia’s “largest overseas signals intelligence facility” in addition to Chinese spy bases. Russia has a spy base in Cuba known as Lourdes while China has a base in a municipality called Bejucal.

FACT CHECK: There is no conclusive evidence that either China or Russia have a spy base in Cuba.

Russia did have a massive spy base in Cuba known as Lourdes — during the Cold War. Vladimir Putin closed the base in 2001, and a year later, it was replaced by a public university. (Stay tuned for our upcoming report from the university, where our efforts to find Russian spies proved fruitless).

Allegations of Chinese spy bases have relied largely on anonymous officials and satellite imagery obtained by the D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, which recently acknowledged that there was “no clear publicly available evidence” proving China’s presence at Bejucal.

Two years ago, we traveled to Bejucal and two other supposed sites and found no evidence of Chinese spies or spy bases.

 

While there is no proof that Russia and China are using Cuba to spy on the United States, the Trump administration is openly spying on Cuba. In April, a U.S. military surveillance drone was spotted flying off Cuba’s coast for several hours, circling in holding patterns near Havana and Santiago de Cuba.

The United States operates more than 800 military and intelligence facilities around the world, including bases used for surveillance, drone operations, missile defense and overseas military campaigns.