The chief of the Cuban General Staff, Roberto Legá Sotolongo, is in Minsk in an official visit.
Miami, United States. – Belarus offered “providing assistance in the formation of a new and modern profile” of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) of Cuba and agreed with Havana to intensify cooperation and military training in sensitive areas – anti -aircraft, communications, military medicine, electronic warfare and engineering – during the official visit to Minsk of the head of the Cuban General General Staff, Roberto Legrá Sotolongo, according to A note from the Belarusian Defense Ministry in Telegram.
The meeting, headed by the Minister of Defense, Víktor Jrénen, was raised as a step to “activate bilateral cooperation in the military sphere.” “During My visit to the island of Freedom [en enero de 2024]the signing of an interdepartmental agreement on military cooperation and the placement of our interaction in a planned base laid the basis to deepen and expand our bilateral contacts, ”said Jrénen.
He also added that, “at present, among the most promising cooperation addresses, which represent a mutual interest, the air forces and anti -aircraft defense troops, communication, military medicine, radioelectronic war and engineering assurance are counted.”
The visit of Legrá Sotolongo to Minsk is part of a sequence of bilateral military contacts that won impulse since 2023, when both parties agreed to a draft cooperation and an event plan for 2024. In August was received in Havana by Legá Sotolongo himself, according to official means of both countries.
This Tuesday, Jrénen said that “the bilateral activities carried out in the last two years [entre Cuba y Bielorrusia] They have demonstrated the demand for exchange of experiences and the high relevance of the study of best practices in order of their subsequent incorporation in the activity of the troops. ”
“I propose to activate bilateral cooperation in the military field. We are prepared to provide assistance in the formation of a new and modern profile of the revolutionary armed forces,” he said.
For his part, Legrá Sotolongo confirmed “the interest in cooperating in the directions indicated by the Belarus Defense Minister” and stressed that “the mutual visits of military delegations really really led to the restart of relations and opened new perspectives of cooperation between the Armed Forces of Belarus and Cuba.”
“With satisfaction we also verify the high level of relations between our countries in general.” According to the official Belarrous Belta agencythe Head of the Cuban Staff said the exchanges have “relaunched” the relationship between both armies.
The geopolitical context adds relevance to the approach: Belarus is a close ally of Russia, allowed the use of its territory as a launch platform for the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and, together with Moscow, carried out in September the strategic exercise “Západ-2025” with the aim of proveing the defensive preparation of the “State of the Union” and the coordination of its forces.
Until the closing of this note, neither the MINFAR nor the official Cuban press had disclosed a detailed agenda of the trip of Legá Sotolongo. Complaints about sending Cubans to fight for Russia and the sustained military approach Minsk-La Havana since 2023 placed the visit under special scrutiny.
In 2023, the Ukrainian government presented a list with 253 passports of allegedly recruited Cuban citizens to fight for Russia. In parallel, Havana announced the disarticulation of a trafficking network with 17 detainees linked to that recruitment and stressed that “Cuba is not part of the war in Ukraine.”
Most recent reports of media and non -governmental organizations, as well as Ukrainian politicians, the amount of Cubans who have been recruited by Russia to fight Ukraine.
