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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.