The deployment of Russian warships in the Caribbean is kabuki theater. For 15 years, a Russia whose international power projection capabilities have deteriorated significantly since the end of the Cold War has periodically sent limited, though still threatening, forces into the vicinity of the United States in response to American activities in the which it considers its own “sphere of influence.”
By Infobae
In 2008, Russia sent nuclear-capable Tu-160 jet bombers, and later warships, to the Caribbean in response to its displeasure over the US positioning of naval forces in the Black Sea during the Georgian civil war launched by separatists backed by Russia in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
In October 2013, Russia again sent Tu-160s to the region as the United States and the European Union pressured Russia for its assistance to Russian militias that seized control of Ukraine’s Donbass region. Although Russian arms sales to Venezuela slowed markedly in the mid-2010s as they later ran out of money to pay for them, in 2019 Russia once again sent Tu-160s to Venezuela (along with a planeload of parts to ensure that they would not get stuck there), as well as S-300 air defense systems, Wagner group mercenary forces, military maintainers and trainers to their ally, to show cheap support (without providing significant new hardware) to the Maduro regime.
During 2022 and 2023, as the United States tried to rally international opinion against Russia for its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, Russia unsurprisingly reached out to its anti-American allies in Latin America (Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua). to declare support for Russia and expand military cooperation. With the exception of minor gestures, such as a modestly expanded agreement for military exchanges with Nicaragua in 2022, and Russian participation in a small sniper exercise in Venezuela in 2023, such Russian events were generally more loaded with symbolism than substance.
As with previous periodic Russian deployments to the region, the June 2024 transit of four Russian Navy ships to Cuba was widely portrayed in the press as an expression of Moscow’s displeasure with the Biden Administration’s authorization of the use of weapons supplied by the United States to attack targets on Russian territory. However, the weeks that Russia needed to plan and execute the mission mean that the decision to send the flotilla was likely made long before the “American provocation” to which it was supposedly responding.
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