The visit of the secretary of the Russian Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, to Cuba and Venezuela, earlier this march, has “absolutely nothing to do with commercial cooperation or economic or scientific development projects”, but is “essentially linked to military aspects”. This is how former Cuban general Rafael del Pino, exiled in the United States, estimates it in a report made public this Sunday by the organization Cuba 21st century.
Del Pino states that “it is evident” that Russian President Vladimir Putin is losing the war he started in Ukraine and “is getting closer and closer to a humiliating defeat”, which could be his end. To avoid this, he continues, “he needs a psychological blow that projects the image of being ready for anything if the United States and NATO continue to support the Ukrainians”, that is, to make believe that he is an “irrational actor capable of pressing a nuclear button”. To project that image “the establishment of a naval military presence in the Caribbean would help him,” says the former pilot.
In the document, Del Pino assures that there is a “plausible logic” between the present moment and the Missile Crisis in 1962, when the military served as an adviser to Fidel Castro regarding the Cuban Air Force.
What encouraged Nikita Khrushchev to place intermediate-range missiles in Cuba, which put the world on the brink of a nuclear confrontation, was, the text continues, “the idea of boldly moving the chips to change the world balance in one fell swoop of military forces”.
Something similar, suggests Del Pino, to what the official Cuban press highlighted when Patrushev’s visit to Havana and Caracas: the commitment “for the construction of a multicentric world without empires or threats.”
“Russia would have the strategic possibility of having a rotating naval presence at Cuban navy bases or even reactivating the old naval submarine base” in Jagua Bay
“If the Cuban mafia agrees to a request from the Kremlin,” fears the former soldier, “Russia would have the strategic possibility of having a rotating naval presence at Cuban navy bases or even reactivating the old naval submarine base built in the seventies in Jagua Bay, Cienfuegos”, a way of “pre-positioning a nuclear strike capability very close to US territory”.
Another possibility that he puts on the table is the installation of “SKIF (Scyth) rocket launch submarine silos on the island platform of Cuba, even masked with the installation of the Cienfuegos submarine base itself.”
In such a scenario, always posed in the subjunctive mode, “the Kremlin could justify this presence by arguing that they are Russian ships that rotate to receive logistical supplies at that Cuban base after training in navigating international waters, exercising their right of free navigation. ” or invoking “sovereign bilateral agreements signed between Russia and Cuba to cover these military collaboration visits.”
“A rotating but permanent presence of Russian submarines or other ships equipped with nuclear rockets calling at Cuban ports would be the possible move that Putin is looking for,” which “would make his threats to resort to nuclear weapons more credible in the coming months if the US and NATO do not stop the delivery of new weapons to Kiev”, Del Pino ventures. Regarding this, he recalls that “the navy of the Iranian ayatollahs, Russia’s allies in the invasion of Ukraine, is already touring the coasts of Brazil with Lula’s consent.”
One condition for granting the Russians strategic use of military installations is that “internal stability” is guaranteed, writes the former soldier, and that is where Patrushev’s meeting with the Interior Minister, General Lázaro Alberto Álvarez Casas, would be explained. , to cooperate in crushing any dissent.
In his conclusions, Del Pino appeals to the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), which “have a duty to protect the nation from the submissive adventurism of the new oligarchy in its desire to please Putin at the expense of Cuban security.” And he asks them: “From the moment our patriotic officers learn that the Gaesa oligarchs want to offer offensive logistical facilities to Putin to support his imperialist invasion of Ukraine from the Western Hemisphere, they must proceed to rebel and arrest them for treason against the Fatherland.” .
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