The visit of the Secretary of the Russian Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, to Cuba and Venezuela in early March this year had “absolutely nothing to do with commercial cooperation or with economic or scientific development projects” but was “essentially linked to military aspects”. This is the assessment of former Cuban general Rafael del Pino, who lives in exile in the United States, in a report published this Sunday by the Cuba Siglo 21 organization.
Del Pino states that “it is evident” that Russian President Vladimir Putin is losing the war he started in Ukraine and is “getting closer to a humiliating defeat” that could be his end. To avoid this, “he needs a psychological punch that conveys the image of being ready for anything if the US and NATO continue to support the Ukrainians,” i.e. pretending that he is an “irrational actor capable of it.” is pushing a nuclear button.” To project that image, “establishing a military naval presence in the Caribbean would help him,” says the former pilot.
In the document, Del Pino asserts that there is “plausible logic” between the present moment and the 1962 missile crisis, when the military served as adviser to Fidel Castro on the Cuban Air Force.
What encouraged Nikita Khrushchev to deploy intermediate-range missiles in Cuba, which brought the world to the brink of nuclear confrontation, the text continues, was “the idea of boldly moving the chips to change the world balance of armed forces in one fell swoop.” .
Something similar, Del Pino suggests, to what the official Cuban press highlighted during Patrushev’s visit to Havana and Caracas: a commitment “to building a multicentric world without empires or threats.”
“Russia would have the strategic option of having a rotating naval presence at Cuban naval bases or even reactivating the old submarine naval base in Yagua Bay
“If the Cuban mafia agrees to a request from the Kremlin,” the former soldier fears, “Russia would have a strategic opportunity to have a rotating naval presence at Cuban naval bases or even the old submarine naval base built in Jagua in the 1970s to reactivate Bay, Cienfuegos”, a way to “pre-position a nuclear attack capability very close to US territory”.
Another possibility he puts on the table is the installation of “SKIF (Scyth) missile launch submarine silos on the island platform of Cuba, even masquerading with the installation of the Cienfuegos submarine base itself.”
In such a scenario, always presented in the subjunctive, “the Kremlin could justify this presence by arguing that these are Russian ships that, after training in navigation, are rotating in international waters for logistical supplies to this Cuban one base and to exercise their right of free navigation. ‘ or citing ‘sovereign bilateral agreements signed between Russia and Cuba to cover these military collaboration visits’.
“A rotating but constant presence of Russian submarines or other nuclear-armed ships calling at Cuban ports would be the possible move Putin is looking for,” which would “add credibility to his threats to resort to nuclear weapons in the coming months.” , if the United States and NATO do not stop the delivery of new weapons to Kiev,” ventures Del Pino. In this regard, he recalls that “the Navy of the Iranian ayatollahs, Russia’s allies in the invasion of Ukraine, has already, with Lula’s consent, sailed the coasts traveled to Brazil”.
A condition for granting the Russians the strategic use of military facilities is the guarantee of “internal stability”, writes the former soldier, and there Patrushev’s meeting with Interior Minister General Lázaro Alberto Álvarez Casas is declared to work together to suppress any contradiction.
In his conclusions, Del Pino appeals to the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), which have “a duty to protect the nation from the servile adventurism of the new oligarchy that seeks to please Putin at the expense of Cuban security.” And he asks them: “The moment our patriotic officers learn that the Gaesa oligarchs intend to offer Putin offensive logistical facilities to support his imperialist invasion of Ukraine from the Western Hemisphere, they must turn to rebellion and… arrest her for treason.”
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