U.S. officials handed Mexico a list of Russian spies posing as diplomats. Mexico did not expel them, reviving old worries about quiet espionage.
The United States quietly sent Mexico a list of more than two dozen suspected Russian intelligence officers it believed were operating under diplomatic cover. The message was blunt. Washington wanted them expelled from Mexican territory. According to current and former officials familiar with those talks, that never happened. The men and women identified as career spies stayed in place.
The Central Intelligence Agency compiled the dossier after the first year of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, when the United States and European allies expelled scores of Russian diplomats suspected of espionage. Some of those officers were later reassigned to Mexico, a country close enough to the United States to collect sensitive information, but far enough from Washington’s security net to feel less watched.
U.S. officials described a pattern that began in 2022 and continued under two Mexican administrations. They say the list of names was passed to Mexico’s Foreign Ministry, along with warnings that several of the officers had experience in sophisticated operations in Europe. Mexico was urged to cancel their diplomatic credentials and send them home. Instead, the suspected spies continued to work out of the Russian embassy in Mexico City and to travel to tourist hubs such as Cancún, where large foreign crowds offer cover for meetings.
Mexican officials, according to those same accounts, either said they had no record of the list or insisted the names did not pose a problem. The episode fits into a longer story in which Mexico balances cooperation with its most important economic partner against a strong political instinct to defend its own foreign policy, even when that means challenging U.S. security concerns.
Russian spies in Mexico and quiet warnings
Concerns about Russian spies in Mexico are not new. In March 2022, the head of the U.S. Northern Command told a Senate committee that Mexico hosted the largest number of officers from Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, anywhere in the world. That testimony rattled Washington and drew a sharp response in Mexico. The Mexican president at the time said he had no information about such a presence and stressed that Mexico was not a colony of any foreign power.
Russia’s government also pushed back. Its embassy in Mexico publicly rejected the claim that the country had become a base for Russian military intelligence, calling those accusations unfounded and accusing the United States of trying to influence Mexico’s sovereign decisions. The message was clear on both sides. Washington saw a growing intelligence threat a few hours’ flight from the U.S. border. Moscow framed the issue as another front in a broader geopolitical struggle.
Despite the headline-grabbing comments, the most significant moves happened in private. U.S. diplomats raised the spy list with Mexico’s Foreign Ministry several times, according to people briefed on the conversations. During the previous administration, the two countries reached a limited compromise. Mexico agreed that U.S. officials could quietly review future Russian applications for diplomatic credentials and flag suspect names. Some proposed diplomats were blocked. But those already in the country under suspicion were not expelled.
U.S. officials later repeated the same concerns after Mexico’s new government took office. Once again, according to one account, senior Mexican figures dismissed the warnings as exaggerated or even paranoid. In public, Mexican leaders continued to stress a traditional doctrine of non-intervention and an independent stance on Russia’s war in Ukraine. Mexico condemned the invasion at the United Nations but refused to join Western sanctions.
For Washington, the unresolved issue goes beyond a single list of names. It raises questions about how far Mexico is willing to go in counterintelligence cooperation when the target is a major power with which it maintains cordial ties. For Mexico, giving in too visibly to U.S. pressure on expulsions carries political costs at home and could be seen as eroding its carefully guarded foreign policy identity.
Espionage, disinformation and a strained partnership
Behind the dispute is a simple calculation. Mexico’s geography offers Russian agencies a rare operating environment. Spies can travel easily to the United States, meet sources who slip across the border, or work under the cover of booming tourism on Caribbean beaches. U.S. officials say that in places like Cancún, suspected Russian officers blend in with holidaymakers, meet handlers in busy hotels, and pass on information gathered in U.S. cities.
At the same time, Mexico’s security services are heavily occupied with organized crime, kidnappings and local corruption. Former officials and analysts say counterintelligence capacity is limited, and political interest in tracking foreign spies has often been low compared with the pressure to respond to cartel violence. That gap, U.S. officials argue, gives Russian services more room to operate than they would enjoy in Europe or inside the United States.
The country has already figured in high-profile espionage cases. In 2022, a Mexican scientist living abroad was sentenced in a U.S. court to four years and one day in prison for acting as an unregistered agent of the Russian government, after carrying out surveillance on a U.S. informant. His case underscored how Russian intelligence has tried to recruit highly educated professionals with ties to both countries and use them to gather sensitive information.
Intelligence gathering is only one part of the picture. Western diplomats have also warned about a surge in Russian-funded media and disinformation in Mexico. State-backed outlets such as RT and Sputnik have dramatically expanded their Spanish-language reach online, drawing hundreds of millions of views on social networks and partnering with local organizations that rebroadcast their content. Research groups that track propaganda say a large share of articles published by at least one Mexican media outlet tied to a journalists’ association now originate from Russian-aligned sources.
Those campaigns often push narratives that cast doubt on U.S. support for Ukraine, question Western alliances and portray Russia as a victim of aggression. European governments have grown concerned enough to assign specialists to their embassies in Mexico City to monitor disinformation and counter it with their own public diplomacy. The U.S. embassy has also created a dedicated role focusing on Russian activity, reflecting how seriously Washington now treats the issue.
Moscow, for its part, insists that its media operations are legitimate and that its diplomats respect Mexican law. Russian officials argue that it is the United States, not Russia, that tries to dictate how Mexico should conduct its foreign policy. Mexican leaders often echo that sentiment when they bristle at public criticism from U.S. officials or legislators.
The unresolved dispute over suspected spies shows how those narratives collide in practice. On paper, Mexico and the United States share an intense security relationship, from migration enforcement to cooperation against drug traffickers. In the shadows, they remain divided over how to handle a third country that is waging a brutal war in Europe while quietly seeking advantages in North America.
For now, the list of alleged Russian officers handed over by U.S. intelligence appears to have changed little on the ground. The names are known. The warnings have been delivered. The suspected spies still go to work, shielded by diplomatic status and by a host country that says it will not be pushed into choosing sides.
