Cuba-Russia: A Russian navy ship docks in Havana as hard times unite two old Cold War friends

(CNN) — As a series of welcoming cannon shots echoed from a nearby colonial fort, the Perekop, a Russian navy training ship, set sail for Havana on Tuesday.

During their four-day visit to Cuba, Perekop’s sailors “will carry out a wide range of activities,” according to the Cuban state news service Prensa Latina, and members of the Cuban public will have the opportunity to tour the ship.

This is the first official visit by a Russian warship to Cuba in years, and another sign of the renewal of the relationship between the two Cold War-era allies after the near collapse of the Soviet Union (USSR). collapsed the Cuban economy.

While the Russian invasion of Ukraine has led to its widespread ostracism, the Cuban government has increasingly defended Moscow.

“We are condemning, we are rejecting the expansion of NATO towards Russia’s borders,” Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel told Russian-controlled network RT in a rare interview in May.

He also criticized the US economic sanctions against Russia, while announcing the Russian “cooperation and collaboration projects” that are being developed in Cuba.

The two countries have also announced a series of agreements and exchanged high-level delegations. The deals include allowing Russia to lease land in Cuba for up to 30 years, developing beachside tourist facilities near Havana, opening a supermarket stocking Russian goods and supplying the island with much-needed fuel.

According to Jorge R. Pinon, a senior fellow at the University of Texas at Austin Energy Institute, since the start of the Ukraine war, Russia has sent Cuba more oil than at any time since the fall of the USSR. So far in 2023, Pinon estimated, Russia has delivered oil worth approximately US$167 million.

Oil has been a crucial lifeline for cash-strapped Cuba this year as shortages led to days of waiting to fill up cars across the island.

Rekindle ties between Cuba and Russia

Throughout much of the Cold War, Cuba and the former Soviet Union cultivated deep ties.

The USSR placed thousands of diplomats, spies and military advisers on the island and built an imposing embassy in Havana that symbolized a scimitar at the heart of US imperialism.

A generation of Cubans braved an unknown cold climate to study in Soviet countries. A popular television program called “9550”, after the number of kilometers that separate Cuba from Russia, questioned Cubans about Soviet life with the grand prize of a paid trip to the USSR.

But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba lost its main trading partner and entered a deep economic depression. Since then, Cubans have looked at their former closeness to the Russians with deep nostalgia or with the disdain of a failed marriage.

Now the rekindled relationship has led some Cuba watchers to lament a missed opportunity for the United States.

While former US President Barack Obama restored diplomatic relations with Cuba and eased economic sanctions, his successor, President Donald Trump, reversed much of that opening. The current incumbent, President Joe Biden, has mostly upheld Trump-era sanctions as he demands that Cuba release political prisoners, jailed for engaging in widespread protests two years ago.

“It seems that under Trump and followed by Biden, the United States has almost given up the field,” said Ric Herrero, executive director of the Cuba Study Group, which promotes greater US-Cuba engagement.

“There has been very modest easing of sanctions, mainly citing humanitarian concerns, and opening up travel, remittances, and re-staffing at the embassy and consulate, but we have seen a White House that has otherwise been unconcerned. for Cuba,” Herrero said.

But the top US diplomat in Havana said that talk of a greater Russian presence in Cuba so far appears to be only lip service.

“There is a great expression in Spanish that says ‘between said and done there is a long stretch,'” Benjamin Ziff, charge d’affaires of the US Embassy in Havana, told CNN. “We haven’t seen, speaking to our contacts here, any evidence of the rise of anything Russian, and frankly, I think the Cuban government would be making a huge mistake if they were looking to follow that model and not the 300-year-old model 90 miles away. of history”.

The Russians are not the only ones wielding military power in Cuba. On Tuesday, the Cuban government criticized the United States for the three-day visit by its nuclear submarine to the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, calling it “a provocative escalation.”

More than 60 years after the US and USSR clashed over secretly planted Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba, East and West still seem to be competing over who will wield the most influence on the island.

Despite the high cost of the war in Ukraine and the economic sanctions, Russian officials say they are committed to Cuba.

“Cuba has been and continues to be Russia’s most important ally in the region,” Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said when meeting his Cuban counterpart, Alvaro Lopez Miera, in Moscow at the end of June.

“We are ready to assist the island of freedom and lend a shoulder to our Cuban friends,” Shoigu said.