White House security advisor Jake Sullivan minimized the arrival of a nuclear-powered submarine and a Russian Navy frigate to Havana. The official reiterated that they have seen Russian naval deployments to Cuba during four US presidential administrations, but said they are vigilant.
“It is something we observe closely and attentively.. “It’s something we made public several days before it happened, so that the world understood the context and also knew that we were watching,” Sullivan told reporters aboard the presidential plane, according to reports. Martí News.
“We will see how this develops in the coming days, but We’ve seen this kind of thing before and we hope to see this kind of thing againbut I’m not going to speculate on motives,” he declared.
According to an AFP report, Sullivan said that the presence of the Russian submarine is something they had not seen beforeand to a question about the possible presence of missiles, answered that they had not observed anything new.
The Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MINREX) said in a statement last week that Russian warships do not carry nuclear weapons.
“The Cubans have come out with their own statements. We don’t necessarily take the Cubans at their word, but we, through our own means, have not seen anything to that extent,” Sullivan said, referring to the nuclear potential.
For his part, the Undersecretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Brian Nichols, in reference to the arrival of the Russian naval squadron in Cuba, said that there may also be some aircraft deployments in the region. “Those actions will culminate in a global Russian naval exercise this fall,” he said at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, responding to a question about relations between Havana and Moscow.
The first ship to enter the Havana roadstead this Wednesday was the oil tanker Akademik Pashin, which accompanied the group, and then the rescue tug Nikolai Chiker, while The frigate Almirante Gorshkov and the nuclear submarine Kazán remained off Havanato enter shortly after.
The frigate and submarine, which are part of a four-ship Russian naval detachment, had conducted missile exercises in the Atlantic Ocean en route to Cuba, the Russian Defense Ministry said Tuesday.
ORn group of US and Canadian warships that accompanied the Russian flotilla on its journey parallel to the coast of that country, it remains off the coast of Cubaas DIARIO DE CUBA was able to verify through maritime monitoring sites.
From the area of Avenida del Puerto, adjacent to the bay, sources consulted by this editorial confirmed an increase in police presence, although passers-by take photos and record videos of the boats without interference.
Admiral Gorshkov is the lead ship of the latest generation of frigates of the Russian Navy which in January 2023 carried out a Zircon hypersonic missile launch exercise in the Atlantic using a computer simulation. It can also carry Kalibr missiles. The Zircon has a range of 1,000 kilometers and achieves a speed of more than 11,000 kilometers per hour, according to the Kremlin. While, Kazan submarine has the capacity to fire cruise missiles.
Last week, two U.S. officials said on condition of anonymity that the exercise is “certainly” part of a broader Russian response to U.S. support for Ukraine, but it is also an attempt by Putin to demonstrate that his Navy is still capable of projecting global powerafter losing important units due to accurate Ukrainian attacks.
Vladimir Putin warned on Wednesday that Russia could deliver long-range missiles to third countrieswho would use these weapons to attack “strategic points” in the territory of Western allies that supply weapons to Ukraine, in what they called a “symmetrical” response to Western arms deliveries to kyiv.
