The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Canada, Mélanie Joly, declared that she did not know the reasons for the visit of the Canadian warship Margaret Brooke to Cuba, coinciding with the presence in Havana of a Russian flotilla that includes a nuclear submarine.
The Canadian warship arrived in the island’s capital on Friday, at the same time that Russian naval forces were staying in Cuba and a US nuclear submarine was at the Guantánamo Naval Base, in the east of the Caribbean country.
According to the Canadian government, the ship has gone to Havana for three days to supposedly celebrate bilateral relations between Cuba and Canada.
In an interview with the minister, the journalist asks her why Canada would have a ship in a Cuban port at the same time that the Russian military ships are there?, to which she responds that she was not aware of the situation.
“This is something that I have to look at much closer. It is information that is new news for me because the Minister of Defense also works with CAF and DND on this same issue; but of course we are going to look at it and come back,” he stated.
The HMCS Margaret Brooke, a ship of the Royal Canadian Navy, began its maneuvers early on Friday to enter the port of the Cuban capital. She had not visited the island since 2016, when she was in Havana just the week that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made an official visit to Cuba.
The arrival of the ship coincides with a period of high military activity in the region and maximum tension due to the stay in the Cuban capital of the Russian nuclear submarine Kazan, the frigate “Almirante Gorshkov”, the rescue tug Nikolai Chiker (SB-131), and the fleet oil tanker Pashin.
It also occurs after the United States announced that its nuclear submarine USS Helena had docked at the Guantánamo naval base, and that the White House said that together with Canada they would “closely monitor” the Russian naval fleet.
Russia described its movements in the Caribbean as routine and assured that they do not represent a threat to the region.
