Satellite stations or espionage? : What is the most mysterious Russian base in Latin America

From 2013 to the present, Russia has installed 9 terrestrial satellite stations known as Glonass (Global Navigation Satellite System, abbreviation in Russian) outside its borders. The last one was installed in Nicaragua 5 years ago and is discussed again when the world reserves Russian resources in the face of a possible world war.

Glonass is a Russian equivalent to the Global Positioning System (GPS) and was created in 1982. Like GPS, the Russian system was born out of military interest in the context of the Cold War and is powered by satellites and can determine the position and speed of signal receivers. Russia has four ground stations in Brazil, three in Antarctica, one in South Africa and one in Nicaragua. The first station outside Russia was installed in Brasilia in 2013 under the chair of Dilma Rousseff.

On April 6, 2017, the Russian district base Glonass was inaugurated at an event attended by about 20 guests from Nicaragua, and was chaired by Daniel Ortega and Laureano Ortega Murillo, son of Rosario Murillo, and Igor Komarov, general manager of the Russian Space Commissioner and Promoter Roscosmos project.

A building with a huge satellite dish was built on the coast of Nejapa Lagoon, a majestic crater formation in Managua, in front of the premises of the U.S. Embassy in Nicaragua. All installation work was carried out by Russian employees and access is limited. A concrete wall decorated with barbed wire closes the passage.

“The consensus is that we will abandon the airspace through which satellites can pass, 5 Russian satellites will pass, 25 of them are behind and we have never found a minute of satellite observation in Nicaragua, but for social welfare and natural disasters, because they are low-altitude satellites, Orlando Castillo, director of the Telecommunications and Postal Research Institute of Nicaragua (Telcor) in April 2016, said that it is not communication.

A year later, Castillo stated during the inauguration that “the Glonass system will also contribute to the fight against drug trafficking and organized crime carried out by the government through the police and the Armed Forces of Nicaragua.”

Government spokesperson Rosario Murillo said, “This is due to the satellite system's ability to strengthen disaster management and prevention work, obtain more accurate weather information, support forecasting and forecasting of crops and crops, and support the entire agricultural sector of Nicaragua. It also strengthens information on soil analysis for better utilization and more effective earthquake recording.”

The Russian news agency Sputnik stated that Roscosmos's plan is to install ground agencies in addition to Kazakhstan, Belarus, Armenia, China, India, Vietnam, Cuba, Spain, Argentina, Indonesia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Mexico and Switzerland.

“When Russia expressed interest in reinstalling military facilities in the Caribbean Sea, the opening of a Russian station in the Managua region raised suspicions. The Russian space agency Roscosmos opened four stations in Brazil that were managed with transparency and easy access. On the other hand, the station we built in Nicaragua is surrounded by secrecy. The little thing that is known about the Nicaraguan station contrasts with how, strangely enough, data about Brazilian women can be collected publicly than other stations.” Jakub Hodek is an article published by the University of Navarra in Spain.

“The level of transparency that surrounds the construction and prevails in the management of stations in Brazil is certainly not the same as that applied to the public level of Managua, the capital of Nicaragua. There are several reports questioning the actual use of the broadcast.First of all, there is no information on the cost of the facility or the specialization of the staff. The fact that it was placed near the U.S. Embassy gave rise to speculation about its use for eavesdropping and espionage.” He adds.

The Earth Bureau of Nicaragua was named Chaika, the pseudonym of Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman who flew into space. It was built by a Russian soldier who entered the country under the pretext of directing it to the Nicaraguan army using a T-72 tank purchased in Russia in 2016.

The retired principal Roberto Samcam is direct on the role of the Glonass station in Nicaragua. “Obviously, it is aimed at espionage and surveillance.”

He says that antennas aimed at the US embassy in Nicaragua are “to monitor the calls of the embassy”, and the stations are part of “all electronic and telephone surveillance carried out by Telcor.”

His presence, located three thousand kilometers from Washington, aroused suspicion in the United States.

“Thirty years after this small Central American country became the prize of the Cold War battle against Washington, Russia again puts its flag in Nicaragua. Over the past two years, the Russian government has strengthened its security association by building facilities that sell tanks and weapons, send troops, and train Central American troops to fight drug trafficking.” The Washington Post columnist Joshua Patlow said.

“Security analysts see the military movement in Central America as a possible response to an increase in US military presence in Eastern Europe, which shows that Russia can strut even in the US backyard.” He says.

For security expert Elvira Cuadra, the presence of the Russian army in Nicaragua is considered a “provocation” in the United States, but at the moment it is not considered a high risk because “another level of influence is needed in Central America.”

“Moscow's strategic interest in relation to Nicaragua has always been to set foot in Central America since the 1980s and expand its capacity for influence,” said the Nicaraguan researcher.

The Glonass station is part of the Russian package, which also includes the delivery of weapons and a police training center located in Las Colinas, Managua. Both Cuadra and Samcam say they do not know the anti-drug trafficking operation in which Russian intelligence or technology was used.

“In 2013, Daniel Ortega took away the DEA and the US military mission from Nicaragua and began to cooperate with the FSB (General Counter Intelligence Service of Russia), the anti-drug agency of the Russian Federation, but he has no experience in fighting drug trafficking in the Western Hemisphere. Their experience led to the fact thatfight drug trafficking in the Western Hemisphere. It is a drug that enters Asia,” explains Samcam.

Drug seizures in Nicaragua began to decline, and drug seizures in northern countries increased. “What Gringo did was wait for drugs in Honduras, and in 2014-2015 he dismantled 66 covert runways from Honduran mosquitoes.” He says. “It is false that the Glonass system helps fight drug trafficking. There is not a single operation in which it is known that the Russians were involved or that satellite stations did such a thing.”

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