Since invading Ukraine, Russia has drawn ever closer to Cuba, which is in dire need of investment in its worst economic crisis since the fall of the Soviet bloc, in its search for new trading partners and political allies.
Since the beginning of 2023, high-ranking Russian representatives have been visiting the island one after the other. After security adviser Nikolai Patrushev and the CEO of the state oil company Rosneft in March, diplomatic chief Sergei Lavrov visited Cuba in April.
Havana also welcomed Vladimir Putin’s economic adviser Maxim Orechkin, Russian business representative in the Kremlin Boris Titov and Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernychenko.
The latter presented a few days ago in Havana a “roadmap” to speed up cooperation with Cuba, which is hit by a deep economic crisis, while representatives of around fifty Russian companies were on the island to explore investment opportunities.
AFP
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov addressed the media in Havana on April 20.
At the end of that visit, which came just under six months after the meeting between Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel and Vladimir Putin in Moscow, a dozen agreements were signed to revitalize exchanges in construction, digital, banking, sugar, transport and tourism .
Agreements that will include “some changes” in Cuban legislation for more flexibility, Mr Chernychenko said, as the communist government was recently forced to open up its centralized economy to small and medium-sized private companies.
In January, following a first visit to the island by entrepreneur Boris Titov, the Russian media had already announced the joint establishment of Cuba’s “Center for Economic Transformation” based on the “development of private companies”.
In the Cuban capital, Russian officials also announced the resumption in July of regular flights between Moscow and the seaside resort of Varadero, in a bid to boost the arrival of tourists from that country, who have been able to use the Russian payment system on the island since March, according to Mir.
Photo YAMIL LAGE / AFP
Cuban Minister Ricardo Cabrisas (right) and Russian businessman Boris Titov in Havana on May 17.
“single period”
During the Cold War, the two countries were close allies. Their ties were cut short in 1991 by the collapse of the Soviet bloc, with which Cuba did 75% of its trade and provided the bulk of its credit sources.
From 2005, after being reduced to zero, relations resumed but never reached the current level of exchanges that President Diaz-Canel described as a “unique time”.
Internationally isolated and subject to increasingly stringent sanctions from Western countries since Ukraine’s February 2022 invasion, “Russia needs trading partners and political allies, and Latin America offers the opportunity to have both,” Mervyn Bain, a specialist in Russia-Latin America relations at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, told AFP.