Achi news desk-
A Russian intelligence unit is likely the source of mysterious symptoms of the so-called Havana syndrome – including brain injuries and hearing loss – experienced by US diplomats in recent years, an investigation has revealed joint media released on Sunday.
The findings directly contradict US officials’ conclusion a year ago that “anomalous health events” (AHI) among embassy staff in Cuba, China and various locations in Europe were not caused by an energy weapon or adversary foreign.
In a related development on Monday, the US defense department said a senior official who attended a summit on the international military alliance NATO in Vilnius, Lithuania, last year experienced similar symptoms.
New evidence revealed in the joint report by the Insider, Der Spiegel and CBS’s 60 Minutes – after a year-long investigation – suggests that sonic weapons were probably created and used by Unit 29155 of the Russian GRU cause of Havana syndrome.
The notorious unit is responsible for Russia’s military intelligence operations abroad and has been blamed for several international incidents, including the attempted poisoning of defector Sergei Skripal in the UK in 2018.
Havana syndrome was first reported in 2016 when diplomats in the Cuban capital reported hearing piercing noises at night, followed by staff in other locations globally, and in Washington DC. Their symptoms included bloody noses, headaches, vision problems and other strange auditory sensations.
“Members of the Kremlin’s notorious military intelligence sabotage squad have been placed at the scene of suspected attacks on US foreign government personnel and their family members, leading victims to question what Washington knows,” the report says.
“The Havana syndrome shows all the marks of a Russian hybrid warfare operation. If the Kremlin is indeed found to be behind the attacks … such a sustained, decade-long campaign would easily count as one of Vladimir Putin’s greatest strategic victories against the United States.”
The Insider said senior members of the unit have received awards and political promotions for work related to the development of “non-lethal acoustic weapons” that include directed energy devices based on sound and radio frequency.
The report also documents a number of incidents where senior US staff were harmed and “neutralized”, some suffering life-changing injuries that led to their early retirement or return to the US. The American Foreign Service Association acknowledged in 2022 that Havana syndrome had “dramatically hurt” morale among US diplomats and affected recruitment.
A follow-up report on Monday from the Insider, 60 Minutes and Der Spiegel reported how a Russian spy who worked as an executive chef at Russian-themed restaurants in New York City and Washington DC was arrested in 2020 and then questioned by an FBI agent who later came down with Havana syndrome. The outlets that produced the report again suggested that the agent’s symptoms may have been caused by a directed energy weapon that was used by the GRU.
In March last year, however, the joint conclusion of seven US intelligence agencies – in a redacted report following their own multi-year investigation into AHIs – was that “constantly available information points against the involvement of US adversaries in causing the reported events”.
Five of the agencies said that foreign involvement was “highly unlikely”, one found it “unlikely”, and the seventh declined to offer an opinion. But most indicated that their assessments were of moderate to low confidence given the evidence available.
On Monday, Russia dismissed as “baseless” the new report linking attacks to its military intelligence operations.
“This is not a new topic. For several years the so-called Havana syndrome has been exaggerated in the press, and from the very beginning it was connected with accusations against the Russian side,” Kremlin press officer Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
“But no one has ever published or expressed any convincing evidence of these baseless accusations anywhere. So, all this is nothing more than baseless, baseless accusations by the media.”
Also on Monday, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh told reporters that an unnamed senior defense official had experienced symptoms of Havana syndrome during the 2023 Nato summit in Vilnius. Citing medical privacy laws, he did not say whether the officer needed treatment, or whether she had to stop performing his duties.
The United States closed its Havana immigration office in 2018 under a shift in American policy towards Cuba and also in response to fears at the time that Havana syndrome was the result of a microwave or other electronic attack. It reopened in August 2023, almost half a year after the US report found no credible evidence that Russia, or anyone else, was behind the attacks.
A new Insider report suggests that the first cases may have occurred in Germany two years earlier than those in Havana in 2016 that gave the syndrome its name.
“There were probable attacks two years earlier in Frankfurt, Germany, when a US government employee working at the consulate there was knocked unconscious by what appeared to be a high energy beam,” the report said.
The New Yorker reported in July 2021 that about two dozen US intelligence officers, diplomats and other government officials in Austria have reported problems similar to Havana syndrome since Joe Biden became president that same year.
The United States used medical and scientific experts to study the alleged attacks and those affected have been extensively examined to try to understand their afflictions.
In 2021, Congress passed the Havana Act, authorizing the state department, CIA and other government agencies to provide payments to personnel and their families affected during assignments.
“We are working overtime across the whole of government to get to the bottom of what happened, who is responsible. And in the meantime to make sure we take care of anyone who has been affected and to protect all our people to the best of our ability,” US secretary of state Antony Blinken said in 2022 after further cases had were reported in Paris and Geneva.
CBC said in a tweet that the office of the director of national intelligence referred inquiries from 60 Minutes journalists to the intelligence community’s annual threat assessment commentary on AHIs.
The network got statements from the White House and the FBI promising to continue investigating the causes and consequences of AHIs.
Agence France-Presse and Reuters contributed to this report
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