The presidents of Russia and Cuba have vowed to strengthen political, economic, and military ties and denounced what they called U.S. “interference in the domestic affairs of sovereign nations.”
In a joint statement following talks in Moscow on November 2, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel and Russia’s Vladimir Putin also called for closer integration between Moscow and Latin American nations.
The visit comes at a time of heightened tensions for both nations with the United States.
U.S. officials continue to assail Havana for its alleged human rights violations, while Moscow and Washington have several contentious issues between them — including accusations, denied by Moscow, of Russian interference in U.S. elections, Moscow’s aggressive actions in Ukraine, and its support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Diaz-Canel invited Putin to visit Cuba in 2019. He has twice traveled there, in 2000 and 2014, as part of efforts to revive relations with the communist island nation.
In a news conference, Diaz-Canel said that “we are going to develop trade and economic ties” and raise them to a high level, citing joint projects in energy, transportation, metals, and biotechnology.
Russian Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak told reporters that Moscow was close to agreeing to a 38-million-euro loan for Cuba to help it buy Russian-made arms. He said the accord could be finalized within two weeks.
During the Cold War, Moscow provided billions of dollars in aid and subsidies to bolster the government of Fidel Castro, a fierce rival of the United States.
But support was slashed after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, when Russia was no longer able to provide financial assistance.
Previously Cuban President met in Moscow with Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev, to whom extended a special greeting from the first secretary of the Cuban Communist Party, Raul Castro.
During the meeting at the Russian government’s Protocol Palace, Diaz-Canel stressed the great satisfaction in Cuba for Medvedev’s meeting with Castro during his visit to Havana earlier this month. The Cuban leader also highlighted the interest shown by the Russian PM not only to continue participating in the Caribbean island’s development program until 2030, but also to suggest new ideas with a view to expanding cooperation.
Medvedev invited Diaz-Canel to participate in the Victory Day celebrations on May 9 next year, commemorating the 75th anniversary of the event.
The Cuban head of state had previously met with Russian businessmen and heard about the state of progress of joint projects, including metallurgy, machine building, energy, transportation and banking.
The meeting was attended by directors of energy companies such as InterRAO, Sinara (locomotives), GAZ (automobiles), Transneft and Zarubezhneft (petroleum), banks and the Russian Railway Company (RZHD by its Russian acronym), among others.
Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Bruno Rodriguez; Communications, Jorge Luis Perdomo; Agriculture, Gustavo Rodriguez; Industry, Alfredo Lopez; and Transport, Eduardo Rodriguez; as well as Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment, Rodrigo Malmierca attended the meeting on the Cuban side.
During the day, Diaz-Canel also visited Zariadie Park, the Tretiakov art gallery and the boulevard of Arba.
In the first part of his European tour, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel visited three European countries and attend the 18th Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Summit in Azerbaijan.
The NAM, with 120-member states as of 2012, is a forum founded in the former Yugoslavia in 1961. Now the NAM countries represent nearly two-thirds of the United Nations members and contain about 55 percent of the world’s population. (Periódico Digital Centroamericano y del Caribe)
