Over the past year, Russia has sent Cuba 1,000 minibuses, 50 locomotives, tens of thousands of tourists and a promise to upgrade the island’s power grid with a multimillion-dollar improvement plan.
Russian-Cuban trade has more than doubled since 2013 to an expected US$500 million this year, mostly in Russian exports to Cuba.
In addition, a string of high-ranking Russian officials have visited their former ally in the Caribbean, including Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.
Photo: AP
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel was yesterday scheduled to arrive in Moscow for meetings with officials including Russian President Vladimir Putin, with the expectation that they would move forward on deals for more trade and cooperation.
Russian-Cuban ties are far from the Cold War era of near-total Cuban dependence on the Soviet bloc, which saw the island nation as a forward operating base in the Americas, then largely abandoned in the 1990s.
However, observers of Cuban and Russian foreign policy have said that there has been a significant warming between the two prompted in part by the administration of US President Donald Trump reversing former US president Barack Obama’s opening to Cuba.
Cuba and Russia are also heavily supporting Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whom the US has been trying to overthrow.
“We did make huge mistakes in the 1990s while turning our backs on Cuba. That time is definitely over, and I’m absolutely sure that our relations deserve better attention from Russia,” Russian Federation Council Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Konstantin Kosachev said.
“They deserve more investments from Russia both in terms of finances and equipment, of course, but also human resources. And definitely we should assist, we should help Cuba; we should support Cuba as long as it’s discriminated against, as long as it’s sanctioned, as long as it’s blockaded by the United States,” he said.
Neither country has provided many details about their improving relations, but Russian products being exported to Cuba include new-model Lada cars and Kamaz trucks.
There is a new Cuban-Russian joint venture to produce construction materials, and when Medvedev visited Cuba earlier this month, he inaugurated a petroleum products plant and signed deals to repair three Soviet-era power plants.
As tourism from the US slackens, Russian visits last year rose 30 percent to 137,000.
“Russia is trying to preserve the zone of influence it had during the era of the Soviet Union, looking for partners in Latin America and letting Washington know that it’s still a great power,” said Arturo Lopez-Levy, a Cuban-born assistant professor of international relations and politics at Holy Names University in Oakland, California.
“Cuba’s signing up for projects that can benefit it and are already showing results on the island,” he said.
Russia is making no secret of its desire to play reliable partner to an island facing hostility from the US, including sanctions on ships carrying oil from Venezuela.
“It’s obvious, the US desire to create a toxic atmosphere around cooperation with Cuba, to frighten investors and block the flow of energy,” Medvedev said in Havana. “Cuba can always count on Russia’s support.”
From the 1960s to the 1980s, Cuba was filled with Soviet products and citizens, who worked alongside Cubans in chemical plants, mines and army bases. Moscow sent billions in aid before the fall of the Soviet Union caused a disastrous 30 percent drop in GDP.
Cuba emerged with US$35 billion in debt to the Soviet Union, 90 percent of which Russia forgave in 2014, an event that Cuban-Russian anthropologist Dmitri Prieto Samsonov called the start of the modern era of relations between the two countries.
“Russia started to think more about its business and government interests and a new relationship with Cuba emerged on the foundation of the old brotherly relations,” Prieto said.
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