Russia steps up for energy links in Latin America
When Cuban ruler Raul Castro met recently with Igor Sechin, head of Russia’s state-owned Rosneft oil company, it was an intimate gathering, held in the same office from where Castro announced the death of his brother Fidel last year.
No details of the Dec. 16 meeting have emerged, but it is now expected that Rosneft will take over Venezuela’s stake in the Cuban-Venezuelan refinery in Cienfuegos, in central Cuba, under an agreement that will favor the island.
Just a few hours before his meeting with Castro, Sechin had met with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who awarded two gas exploration contracts to the Russian company.
Castro later announced that he was delaying his retirement from February to April, which would give him enough time to sign an agreement with Rosneft that would help the Cuban economy.
Venezuela’s political and economic crisis, plus Cuba’s need for foreign investment, has opened the door to a stronger Russian presence in Latin America, a shift that has become part of a geopolitical game reminiscent of the Cold War.
“Russia is a much less important economic player in the hemisphere than China. Russia has fewer interests in the Americas but likes to meddle in what they perceive as our backyard,” said Mark Feierstein, director of Latin American policy under President Barack Obama’s administration.
President Donald Trump publicly warned in his recent national security strategy document that rival powers are finding “room to operate” in the hemisphere.
“Russia continues its failed politics of the Cold War by bolstering its radical Cuban allies as Cuba continues to repress its citizens,” the document noted. Both China and Russia “support the dictatorship in Venezuela and are seeking to expand military linkages and arms sales across the region.”
But in private, the Trump White House faces more urgent problems and believes that Russian spending to prop up two nearly bankrupt economies is not necessarily bad news for Washington, experts said. The Russian economy itself has been hit hard by U.S. and European Union sanctions, and Sechin is on a U.S. Treasury Department black list. The White House also faces more important problems with Russia, such as the FBI investigation of Moscow’s efforts to meddle in last year’s presidential election.
At the same time, the Trump administration has put added economic pressure on the Castro government and made it more difficult for U.S. companies to do business in Cuba.
“Trump’s steps to limit U.S. commercial engagement with Cuba creates an opportunity for other countries. One of them is Russia,” said Feierstein.
For Cuba, the gradual warming of relations with Moscow was almost natural, experts said. They have decades of history as allies and Raul Castro “has always been pro-Russia,” said Andy Gomez, former interim director of the Institute for Cuban and Cuban American Studies at the University of Miami.
But Castro is also viewed as a pragmatist, and his renewed flirting with Moscow is likely more driven by Cuba’s need for oil and its economic troubles than by ideology.