Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visited old Cold War ally Cuba on Thursday, spending hours with President Raul Castro on the final leg of a Latin America tour designed to increase Moscow’s profile in a region long dominated by the US.
Medvedev arrived in Havana from Venezuela, where he met socialist President Hugo Chavez and agreed to help the oil-rich South American country start a nuclear energy program.
Russian officials deny that Medvedev’s four-nation trip to Latin America is meant to provoke the US, but the voyage included meetings with Washington’s staunchest opponents in the region. Chavez and Medvedev met aboard a Russian warship docked in a Venezuelan port ahead of joint military exercises.
PHOTO: AFP
Medvedev said Russia was stepping up its political ties in Latin America and said Moscow must aggressively seek to shore up its economic position in the region.
“One must admit, to put it simply, we have never had a serious presence here — these have been just episodes,” he told reporters in Cuba, referring to Latin America as a whole.
“We visited states that no Russian leader, and no Soviet leader, ever visited. This means one thing: that attention simply was not paid to these countries,” he said.
“And in some ways we are only now beginning full-fledged, full-format and, I hope, mutually beneficial contacts with the leaders of these states — and, correspondingly, with the economies of these states. We should not be shy and fear competition. We must bravely enter the fight,” he said.
The visit comes at a time when Russia is angry at US plans to build a missile-defense system in Eastern Europe.
The upper chamber of the Czech Parliament on Thursday approved a deal to accept a US missile defense installation. Russia fiercely opposes the plans, saying US military installations in former Soviet satellites threaten its security.
In Cuba, Raul Castro did not greet the Russian president at the airport, but he was by his side just a short time later, accompanying Medvedev to the monument of independence hero Jose Marti and to a recently inaugurated Russian Orthodox Church.
The pair also met privately, then spoke again surrounded by top advisers as part of “official conversations” at the storied Palace of the Revolution, discussing the global financial crisis and other topics.
“We discussed the development of our relations, in the economic sphere and the sphere of military-technical cooperation” — arms sales — “as well as security and regional cooperation,” Medvedev told reporters.
The 77-year-old Castro — who succeeded his brother Fidel as president in February — served as Cuba’s defense minister for nearly five decades and enjoyed an excellent relationship with Soviet defense officials.
A steadfast communist who visited the Soviet Union often, Castro has long been thought of as a great admirer of Moscow and its policies.
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
In front of a secluded temple in southwestern China, Duan Ruru skillfully executes a series of chops and strikes, practicing kung fu techniques she has spent a decade mastering. Chinese martial arts have long been considered a male-dominated sphere, but a cohort of Generation Z women like Duan is challenging that assumption and generating publicity for their particular school of kung fu. “Since I was little, I’ve had a love for martial arts... I thought that girls learning martial arts was super swaggy,” Duan, 23, said. The ancient Emei school where she trains in the mountains of China’s Sichuan Province
RSS