A Covert Russian Intelligence Squad May Be Behind Havana Syndrome Attacks

A five-year investigation into Havana syndrome, conducted by television news magazine 60 Minutes, has uncovered evidence that individuals stricken with the debilitating condition may have been the victims of deliberate attacks using directed energy weapons, conducted by members of a covert Russian assassinations squad. Although the evidence presented does not appear to be conclusive, it is suggestive enough to undermine—if not outright contradict—assertions made in earlier government reports that concluded that Havana syndrome was not the result of foreign attacks, a denial that may be part of an ongoing cover-up of the real cause behind the phenomenon.

Described as a “genuine and compelling” phenomenon probably caused by a “pulsed electromagnetic energy” device of unknown origin in a 2023 declassified report, Havana syndrome, now officially referred to as anomalous health incidents (AHIs), first appeared in 2016 amongst diplomats assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Cuba, but in subsequent years began affecting government employees assigned to consulates around the world, with at least two incidents taking place on U.S. soil. AHI sufferers report a range of concussion-like symptoms that include hearing loss, headaches, nausea, and tinnitus; a number of those affected also show physical signs of brain swelling and concussions, and have difficulty with mental concentration and common word recall.

Although definitive evidence of the neurological injuries sustained by the individuals with Havana syndrome has been extensively documented, the exact cause of the condition, including who might be responsible, has remained elusive. Initially speculated to have been caused by a sonic weapon due to the experience of strange auditory phenomena reported by many of the patients before their symptoms set in, medical scans of the affected diplomats revealed specific damage to their brains’ white matter tracts. This development led to a 2020 National Academy of Sciences report that found that the most likely cause of these injuries was due to exposure to pulsed radio frequency energy, with the victims’ symptoms resembling those exhibited by U.S. embassy workers in Russia who were affected by microwave-based surveillance devices during the Cold War.

In 2021 an FBI agent who had been conducting extensive interviews with a suspected Russian spy says she experienced a Havana syndrome-like attack at her home in Florida. The suspect, a Russian national named Vitalii Kovalev, was arrested following a high-speed chase with police that took place in Key West, Florida, in 2020. In his car, police found a portable device designed to erase the car’s computer and GPS data, along with a Russian passport and notes for numerous bank accounts.

The FBI agent, who used the pseudonym ‘Carrie’ for her interview with 60 Minutes, conducted over 80 hours of interviews with Kovalev during his incarceration; it was during this period that she was struck with AHI symptoms.

“It felt like I was stuck in this steep of disorientation, not able to function,” Carrie described, “and my whole body was pulsing.” She reported experiencing the same effects a year later while in California; were these incidents the result of retaliatory attacks perpetrated by agents connected to Kovalev?

While investigating Kovalev’s background for 60 Minutes, Christo Grozev, a Bulgarian journalist who specializes in investigating Russian covert operations, found that Kovalev had “studied radio electronics, with a particular focus on use within the military, of microwave electronics.”

“He had all the technology know-how that would be required for somebody to be assisting an operation that requires high technology,” Grozev remarked. “Then all of a sudden, after working for two years in the military institute, [Kovalev] up and decides to become a chef.”

The electrical engineer immigrated to the U.S. and began a career as a chef in New York and Washington D.C., all the while holding a Russian top-secret security clearance—a curious turn for a highly-trained individual expected to be beholden to the Russian military.

Despite the evidence found in his car and his military-backed training in Russia, it was never determined what Kovalev might have been up to, resulting in him only being charged with evading police and reckless driving. After completing his sentence in 2022, Kovalev returned to Russia, despite warnings from American authorities that it might not be safe for him to do so, due to the FBI’s investigation; last year, Grozev uncovered a death certificate stating that Kovalev was killed at the Ukrainian front.

Although the document could have been forged to allow Kovalev to disappear to avoid further scrutiny from western authorities, Grozev said that “one theory is that he was sent there in order for him to be disposed of.” Although Grozev has investigated both possibilities, he believes that Kovalev is indeed dead.

While there remains no direct link between Carrie’s investigation into Kovalev and her AHI symptoms, her case does share one common denominator with numerous other instances: the work of the individuals with AHI typically involved Russia, according to the official that led the Defense Intelligence Agency’s investigation into AHI from 2021 through 2023, Lieutenant Colonel Greg Edgreen. The evidence uncovered during his investigation prompted the former intelligence officer to, “at a very early stage” in the investigation, “to focus on Moscow.”

Edgreen found that instead of lower-ranking government employees being affected, Havana syndrome seemed to be affecting mostly high-level personnel.

“One of the things I started to notice was the caliber of our officer that was being impacted,” Edgreen said. “This wasn’t happening to our worst or our middle-range officers: this was happening to our top five, ten percent performing officers across the Defense Intelligence Agency, and consistently there was a Russia nexus; there was some angle where they had worked against Russia; focused on Russia, and done extremely well.

“The impact has been that the intelligence officers and our diplomats working abroad are being removed from their posts with traumatic brain injuries; they’re being neutralized.”

One high-level attack occurred at the 2023 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, where an unnamed senior Defense Department Official succumbed to symptoms consistent with Havana syndrome, severe enough to prompt them to seek medical treatment.

“It tells me that there are no barriers on what Moscow will do, on who they will attack, and that if we don’t face this head-on the problem is going to get worse,” Edgreen said of the NATO Summit attack.

Edgreen said that although he had support from the DoD for his investigation, the threshold for proof set by the White House during the past two administrations was set “impossibly high… because we did not, as a country and a government, want to face some very hard truths.”

“Can we secure America? Are these massive counterintelligence failures? Can we protect American soil, and our people on American soil? Are we being attacked, and if we’re being attacked is that an act of war?” Edgreen said of the conundrum that AHI presented to authorities.

When directly asked by 60 Minutes‘ Scott Pelley if we’re being attacked, Edgreen responded “My personal opinion: yes,” by “Russia.”

Christo Grozev’s investigation may have also led him to the covert group responsible for these attacks: GRU Unit 29155. First revealed by an investigation led by France’s Le Monde in 2019, Unit 29155 is suspected to have been in operation since at least 2008, and is tasked with carrying out assassinations and the destabilizing of foreign countries. Members of the unit are believed to be responsible for the unsuccessful assassination attempt on former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter, who were exposed to the Russian nerve agent Novichok while residing in Salisbury, England.

“These are people who are trained to be versatile assassins and sabotage operators; they’re trained in counter-surveillance; they’re trained in explosives; they’re trained in using poison; and technology equipment, [to] inflict pain or damage to the targets,” Grozev explained. There are also indications that members of Unit 29155—including a positive identification of the son of the unit’s commander—may have been present in Tbilisi, Georgia when individuals attached to the U.S. embassy there were stricken with AHI.

During his investigation into the covert unit, Grozev uncovered a document that may indicate that Unit 29155 uses directed energy weapons as part of their operations, in the form of an accounting memo regarding a bonus given to a unit member for his work on “potential capabilities of non-lethal acoustic weapons.” Although sonic weapons themselves have been determined to be an unlikely cause behind the physical symptoms of AHI, the document illustrates Unit 29155’s interest in unconventional weapons such as these, of which could include microwave-based devices of the sort that are considered to be more likely to have been used.

“Which told us that this particular unit had been engaged with… empirical tests of a directed-energy unit,” Grozev remarked. “It’s the closest to a receipt you can have for this.”

In addition to representing FBI Agent Carrie in the legal aspects of her AHI case, attorney Mark Zaid represents over two dozen other individuals that suffer from Havana syndrome. Although he says that he can’t reveal the details of the classified AHI-related information he has had access to, he says that, when it comes to the recent government reports that are dismissive of various aspects of AHI, he doesn’t “believe it to be the entire story, and I know of information that undermines or contradicts what they are saying publicly.”

“There is, in my view, without a doubt, evidence of a cover-up,” Zaid continued. “Now some of that cover-up is not necessarily that ‘oh, we’ve found a weapon, and we don’t want anybody to know about it.'” “What I’ve seen more so is, we see lines of inquiry that would take us potentially to answers we don’t want to have to deal with; so we’re not going to explore any of those avenues.”