Four Russian military vessels arrived in Cuba this Wednesday after crossing the Atlantic for a week. The fleet includes a nuclear powered submarine that at night he carried out military exercises just a few hours after his arrival on the American continent, firing missiles high precision against simulated enemy targets from a distance of more than 600 kilometers. Cuba rose to the criticism to say that the ships, which will remain 45 kilometers from the coast of the United StatesThey do not carry nuclear weapons. He US Department of Defense He said he does not perceive a threat but displaced several warships to closely follow the trajectory of the Russian flotilla as it passes along the coast of Florida.
What is notable is that these maneuvers come just a few days after Joe Biden allowed Ukraine to use American weapons on Russian territory. In response, the Russian president, Vladimir Putinassured that he was going to “improve the air defense” that it has stationed in its allied countrieslike Cuba.
It’s not the first time that Russian Navy ships are sent to Cuba. The last time was last July, when a single training ship called at the port of Havana for four days, the longest known visit in years. However, the fleet is larger this time and it is inevitable that it refers to the historic missile crisis of 1962a crucial moment in the Cold War which led to what are now 60 years of isolation in Cuba, to the point that the island is currently going through its worst economic and humanitarian crisis in decades, and leaves it at the expense of shipping oil and supplies from Russia.
“Cuba wants to return to the conversation with the US and see itself under the protective mantle of Russia”Abraham Jiménez, Cuban dissident and writer based in Spain, explains to EL PERIÓDICO. “It is symptomatic that in 2024 it will have to be using strategies from the 60s,” he adds. “Cuba wants to remain at the mercy of the aid received by Russia.”to the point that he has sent Cuban soldiers to the war in Ukraine, something totally unacceptable.”Add.
Jiménez, 34 years old, is part of the generation of dissonant voices that, instead of being punished with confinement, the Cuban Government itself issued them a passport and expelled them from the country against their will. The change occurred after the notorious protests of the summer of 2021, the first time that Cubans took to the streets in unison, protesting the lack of food and medicine. “Now no one covers my voice but I don’t see what’s happening,” Jiménez laments.
distribution of blame
For his part, the Former Cuban diplomat José Cabañas defends that Cuba has duly informed the US of the arrival of the ships and points to the Western bloc as guilty of the recent escalation of tensions. “NATO has broken all promises of not expanding to the east, creating enormous strategic risks,” he explains from Cuba to this newspaper. For example, in July “Cuba denounced the presence of a US nuclear submarine in the perimeter of the Naval Base located in the illegally occupied territory in Guantánamo , and few media outlets from countries that consider themselves allies of the United States considered our concerns as news.” Among these concerns, the official, who spent 37 years in the Cuban diplomatic service, points to “the inexplicable permanence of Cuba on the list of countries that supposedly sponsor terrorism“, which includes only four countries, and which includes Syria, Iran and North Korea, and excludes Russia.
Echoes of the past
Cuba became a key ally of the former USSR with the revolution of Fidel Castro in 1959, which led to the island briefly hosting soviet nuclear missiles in 1962. The then American president, John F. Kennedydemanded their withdrawal from his Russian counterpart, who agreed without notifying the host country, something that made the Cuban regime feel ignored.
“Even then it was an orchestrated theater,” he compares Lazaro Gonzalez, Cuban dissident and filmmaker exiled in the US. “They used Cuba as a toy in the middle of the two empires,” and adds that despite the dissolution of the Soviet bloc, the parallel between the two incidents is that “it justifies a dictatorial government always prepared for combat.”
Close-up mirages
The presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro They became closer diplomatically and commercially in the 2010s, but failure the attempt to close Guantanamo. Donald’s arrival trump to the White House reversed most of the gains and signed an executive order to keep the jail open indefinitely.
To its turn, Biden relaxed some restrictions in the wake of the 2021 protests in Havana and the crackdown that followed. But despite his expressed “desire” of “eventually lift restrictions” to remittances and allow Americans to travel to Cuba, only has focused on limiting irregular migration. The advances of the Obama era, only valid for a brief period of two years, have been archived as a deceptive mirage.
