Russia’s rubber-stamp legislature passed an “intergovernmental agreement on military cooperation” with the communist government of Cuba on Tuesday, formalizing an already existing alliance providing cannon fodder for the invasion of Ukraine.
Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro also announced on Tuesday that he had solidified a “strategic partnership” with Russia that could allow Moscow greater ability to leverage influence in the Western Hemisphere, challenging the United States.
According to the Russian news agency Tass, the upper house of the Duma ratified an agreement that “will provide legal grounds to define the goals, areas and forms of bilateral military cooperation,” suggesting that such cooperation already existed between the two countries informally. The agreement is one step below the commitments of the mutual defense treaty that Russia signed with North Korea in June 2024, which preceded Pyongyang admitting that it had deployed troops to the war theater against Ukraine in Kursk.
Alexander Stepanov, a purported Russian “military expert,” told Tass that the military agreement with Cuba was a form of retaliation against President Donald Trump for his ongoing support for Ukraine, in particular concerns that the United States may soon provide Ukraine with Tomahawk cruise missiles.
“This is about a symmetrical response to the potential supply of Tomahawks,” Stepanov stated plainly. “The ratified agreement maximally expands our military cooperation and allows, within the framework of bilateral interaction and in coordination with the government of the Republic of Cuba, to deploy virtually any offensive systems on the island’s territory.”
Absent from Stepanov’s analysis is the fact that the Ukrainian government has already captured and identified Cuban nationals fighting on the part of Russia in Ukraine. In March 2024, the Ukrainian government announced the capture of a man named Frank Dario Jarrosay Manfuga of Guantánamo. Jarrosay, a musician who thought he was taking a construction job when he arrived in the Ukraine war theater, was captured when he accidentally ran into a Ukrainian war trench instead of a Russian one. In subsequent interviews, Jarrosay insisted that he did not know he was signing up to fight for Russia.
Speaking at a House of Representatives hearing in September, Andriy Yusov, a spokesman for Ukrainian military intelligence, estimated that as many as 20,000 Cuban men are fighting for Russia in the invasion.
“Cuba is ranked at the top of the list of sources of foreign mercenaries. Currently our good intelligence tells us about 20,000 people from Cuba who have already filled out the documents and have been recruited to fight for Russia,” he asserted.
Lawmaker Maryan Zablotskyy, who in May first revealed the estimate of 20,000 Cubans fighting for Russia, testified at the same hearing that much of the aid Russia is relying on to continue the invasion comes from the three countries listed by the United States as state sponsors of terrorism: Iran, Cuba, and North Korea.
“Without the military support from state sponsors of terror, Russia would have already stopped their attack,” Zablotsky asserted, asking lawmakers present to look into “develop[ing] some legislation that can help at least Russia stop the use of the state sponsors of terror.”
The government of Ukraine announced a major effort to expand its diplomatic outreach in Latin America in July, including opening embassies in the Dominican Republic, Panama, Uruguay, and Ecuador to combat Russia’s successful partnerships with leftist regimes in the region.
The matter of military cooperation with Russia is separate from that of the “strategic partnership” with Venezuela, but related, as Cuba and Venezuela are close geopolitical partners. Maduro announced the signing of the decree for cooperation on Tuesday, accompanied by Russian Ambassador to Caracas Sergey Melik-Bagdasarov.
“On October 7, I was invited to meet with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who, in a solemn atmosphere and in the presence of the country’s leading TV channels, signed a decree on the entry into force of the Russia-Venezuela strategic partnership and cooperation agreement,” the ambassador told Tass.
The Venezuelan agreement, according to local media, goes beyond the scope of military cooperation, touching on the “development of mechanisms that facilitate commerce and investment without depending on Western financial systems” – effectively facilitating the bypassing of human rights sanctions on both countries.
The Russian government has for years used Venezuela to intimidate the United States militarily. In 2018, Russian and Venezuelan news agencies reported that the Maduro regime would allow the Russian government to build a military base on the island of La Orchila. Russia also flew nuclear-capable jets in Venezuela, mere hundreds of miles from the United States, that year.
Venezuela signed a cybersecurity deal with Russia in June, alongside more than ten different countries, including Cuba and North Korea.
Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.
Read the full article here