Cuba welcomes Russian minister as ‘a dear friend,’ makes no mention of Alexei Navalny’s death
Just days after the death of Russia’s most prominent opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, in an Arctic penal colony, Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, embarked on a Latin American tour with the first stop in Cuba on Monday and visits to Venezuela and Brazil on his schedule.
Just like Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is believed never to have mentioned Navalny’s name publicly, it’s difficult to find any mention of the fierce Putin critic in Cuba’s state media, which did not report his death Friday ahead of Lavrov’s visit.
Instead, Cuban official media outlets, controlled by the Communist Party, welcomed the Russian minister “as a true friend of Cuba.”
“For us, it is a pleasure to welcome you back to Cuba,” said Cuba’s handpicked president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, in remarks reported by Granma, the island’s biggest daily newspaper. “We do so with the feeling that we are receiving a true friend of Cuba, someone who has shown tremendous sensitivity and understanding toward our problems, and with whom we have always had a fluid exchange relationship.”
Lavrov, in turn, repeated that Cuba “is our traditional partner and our most important ally in Latin America and the Caribbean” and promised to continue expanding trade, investments and economic cooperation.
Speaking to reporters in Havana, the top Russian diplomat also railed at the United States and the wider West as employing “blackmail, ultimatums, threats, the use of brute military force and sanctions” to “preserve their domination.”
A U.S. State Department official told the Miami Herald that Lavrov’s visit did not bode well for U.S.Cuba relations.
“As we have noted previously, closer collaboration between the Cuban government and Russian military is not in Cuba’s interest and will negatively impact the U.S.-Cuba bilateral relationship,” the official said.
The official noted that Lavrov’s trip follows closely the visit by Belarusian Defense Minister Viktor Khrenin to Havana in late January and fresh reports of Cubans fighting beside Russian forces in Ukraine.
In September, hacked documents showed Russia was recruiting Cuban men to join its army, lured by promises of $2,000-amonth salaries and Russian citizenship for their families. The Cuban government said it had dismantled the recruiting ring at the time and promised stiff punishments to those involved.
However, according to Ukrainian officials cited in a recent Wall Street Journal report, the recruiting efforts continued, and hundreds of Cubans are fighting in Ukraine. Some, like Raibel Palacio, the first Cuban mercenary whose death has been confirmed by family members, traveled to Russia in November, two months after the Cuban government said it had arrested 17 people involved in the recruiting network.
“We are concerned that Cuba continues to allow its citizens to be exploited in support of Russia’s war of aggression in violation of international law, including the U.N. Charter,” the State Department official said.
As Russia’s international isolation has increased over its invasion of Ukraine, it has strengthened its diplomatic and military ties with Cuba.
Military and security officials frequently meet both in Moscow and Havana. And Cuba has leaned on the relationship to ask Russia for credit and investments to lift the island’s economy from its current crisis. Last year, Cuban authorities promised Russian investors exclusive deals, such as long-term land leases.
The Russian government has donated wheat, cooking oil and medical supplies to the island and given money to repair the island’s old railroad system.
But despite the intense diplomatic activity — this is Lavrov’s ninth trip to the island as foreign minister since 2004 — Russia, a sanctioned country waging war, has yet to make moresignificant economic concessions to its Caribbean partner. Privately, Russian officials have joined calls on Cuba to expand economic reforms to improve the island’s business climate, the Herald learned.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Lavrov’s visit that “key achievements” in economic cooperation between the countries over the past year “will help Russian economic operators to play a more active role in the implementation of Cuba’s large-scale plans for socio-economic development until 2030.”