The Russian Defense Minister, Sergey Shoygu, who was on an official visit last February, held talks with the President of the Council of State and the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Cuba, Raul Castro, with whom he analyzed the aforementioned cooperation, not including any kind of arms sales agreement and stressing that the purpose of the meeting is to want to demonstrate the continued Russian interest in Latin American countries.
Moscow and Havana, however, reiterated that today's relaunch is not a consequence of the current political situation, but the result of the work of both parties during the last 10 years.
A good part of the armaments that Cuba has for defense, in fact, are of Soviet or Russian origin, with parts bought in Russia.
"Our military relations will develop in a constructive way," said Shoygu, during the meeting with Raul Castro; he recalled that many Cubans studied in Russian military academies, stressing Moscow's interest in expanding cooperation with Cuba, especially in the naval field.
Cuba is the third destination of the Shoygu tour in the Latin American continent. In Caracas, Venezuela, the parties agreed to carry out several joint military exercises and in Managua, Nicaragua, an intergovernmental agreement was signed to simplify the procedure for docking Russian warships in Nicaraguan ports.
The Russian-Cuban meeting in the aftermath of the new US opening towards the Caribbean island is not surprising. The pretext for this clamorous opening was the release decided in Havana by Alan Gross, USAID technician, detained by the 2009, against the exchange of five Cubans accused of spying in the United States, convicted and detained in prison.
In 2009, the Cuban authorities subjected Gross to a sham trial, sentenced him to fifteen years in prison on charges of bringing computer equipment to the small and old Jewish community in Havana. (ed. Difficult Choices by Hillary Rodham Clinton - ed. Sperling and Kupfer).
Among the novelties of this opening is the "United States-Cuba" event, next year, together for the first time at the Summit of the Americas in Panama, where human rights and the liberalization of telecom investments will also be discussed: for bring the Internet to an island where only 5% of the population surfs online. It is thanks to the concessions of Havana that American digital companies will be able to bring their own infrastructures and technologies.
This new event, in my opinion, seems to hover in the air, the ghost of the first part of the Monroe doctrine that proclaimed, in the distant 1923, that America belonged to Americans from North to South, and that the United States would not tolerate no interference by European powers, in this case others, such as Russia.
Maria Grazia Labellarte
Source: web; Difficult choices by Hillary Rodham Clinton ed. Sperling and Kupfer; El continente olvidado Michael Reid - Grupo editorial Norma
(photo: acn)
