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Moscow has ramped up covert operations in Mexico, with spies meeting handlers in its bustling capital and seaside resorts, U.S. officials say.

When a U.S. general publicly declared that Mexico was a haven for Russian spies, Mexico’s president at the time dismissed it outright.

“We don’t have information on this,” President Andrés Manuel López Obrador told reporters the next day, in March 2022.

That was not true.

His top aides had repeatedly heard from Washington about the increase in Russia’s covert activities in Mexico, according to nine current and former American and Mexican officials. In fact, Mr. López Obrador had been told about the problem directly, said three of the U.S. officials briefed on the discussions.

The C.I.A. had even compiled a list of more than two dozen Russian spies posing as diplomats, but Mexican officials refused to kick them out of the country, five of the officials said.

The United States did secure a major promise from Mexico in 2023, several of the people said: Under pressure, Mexico agreed to let U.S. officials weigh in on Russians applying for diplomatic credentials, and they have rejected some of them.

But even after a new president took office in Mexico last fall, the Russian spies already in the country were not expelled, according to six current and recently departed officials.

“The Mexican government did help, but they could have done a lot more,” said Juan González, the director for Western Hemisphere affairs on the National Security Council during the Biden administration. “We gave them names of Russian spies who were posing as diplomats at the embassy in Mexico City. These were seasoned spies, who had been on sophisticated operations across Europe.”

Mexico’s proximity to the United States and the cover provided by tourism for spies to operate has allowed Moscow to significantly ramp up espionage activities in the country in recent years, U.S. officials say. Moscow can fly spies and informants from the United States to beach destinations like Cancún, which millions of Americans visit every year — providing a convincing cover that raises few red flags.

Spies and their handlers meet among tourists, sunbathers and surfers, officials say, handing off intelligence gathered in the United States while using Mexico to evade Washington’s sophisticated surveillance systems.