Manuel Marrero met this Wednesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who promised him help to overcome the consequences of Washington’s sanctions. “We know that the illegal sanctions, under which Cuba lives, have continued for decades. However, the Cuban people face them. For our part, we will do everything so that our economic interaction helps to overcome these challenges brought from abroad”, Putin said.
The president also stressed the “special and allied character” of the relations between the two countries for years and welcomed the fact that the Cuban prime minister is in Russia, where he will attend the International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg, which begins this Wednesday.
“I hope it will be useful and interesting. But our bilateral cooperation is even more interesting. It should develop in all the spheres that we have agreed on, I am sure it will. It is about energy, tourism, some other areas that are priority” , he claimed.
“You know that we have always had and will have a special relationship with the Island of Liberty,” Putin said, asking Marrero to convey his “best wishes” to his counterpart, Miguel Díaz-Canel, and “comrade Raúl Castro.” .
“We see in your country a real strength, strength. We are very proud of your country,” said the prime minister, who accused the West of “Russophobia” and considered that the pressures have failed
Marrero, for his part, once again expressed his unwavering support for Putin in what he considers a Western campaign against the country and which is trying to isolate it with the sanctions imposed since the invasion of Ukraine.
“We see in your country a real strength, strength. We are very proud of your country,” said the prime minister, who accused the West of “Russophobia” and considered that the pressures have completely failed.
The certain thing is that the business event of Saint Petersburg will be the demonstration of the solitude of Russia. The meeting, which annually had the presence of allies such as the current French president, Emmanuel Macron, or the former German chancellor Angela Merkel, this year has the Hungarian Foreign Minister, Péter Szijjártó, as the only European representative.
In addition to Marrero will be the Venezuelan oil minister, Pedro Tellechea, the Chinese ambassador in Moscow, Zhang Hanhui, several senior officials from the United Arab Emirates and Russian tycoons of all stripes. Even some neighbors, allies or politicians with a greater predisposition to approach positions with Russia, as the Bloomberg agency has pointed out, will be absent from the event, among them the Kazakh president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and the Brazilian Luis Inazio Lula da Silva, who declined the invitation.
Some countries from the Middle East and others from Asia, such as Sri Lanka, Laos, Vietnam, Turkey and Thailand, will be well represented.
“[Rusia es] a country, which finally admitted to itself that it is a country-civilization and cannot be isolated. A country, a people and a State that honors its history, knows it and transmits it to future generations will not be isolated.”
Despite the soullessness of the event, which this year will not even have galas with well-known international artists, as on other occasions, the spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, María Zajárova, told the Sputnik agency at the opening that “Russia is not isolated at all despite attempts to do so”, since, he claimed, there are representatives from 130 countries and territories.
“[Rusia es] a country, which finally admitted to itself that it is a country-civilization and cannot be isolated. A country, a people and a State that honors its history, knows it and transmits it to future generations will not be isolated. They can isolate themselves from us (…) but it is impossible to isolate us,” he insisted.
This Tuesday it was learned of an agreement between Cuba and Russia for the oil company Rosneft to supply 1.64 million tons of hydrocarbons to the island. In a meeting between Marrero and his Russian counterpart, Mikhail Mishustin, both agreed that the island have a “stable supply” of fuel.
Meanwhile, this Wednesday an electricity deficit is expected on the island of more than 600 megawatts and the only tangible thing in Havana of the brotherhood between the partners is the Order of Friendship to General Álvaro López Miera, Cuban Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), which received the distinction granted by Putin.
Thus, Russia “recognizes the important contribution of the head of the Defense Ministry of the Republic of Cuba to the strengthening of military and technical-military cooperation between both countries.”
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