Cuba and Russia promise to strengthen their relations after Western sanctions

The Russian President, Vladimir Putinand his Cuban counterpart, Miguel Diaz-Canelthey inaugurated a monument in honor of the Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro in a square in the north of Moscow, while they promised to deepen their ties in the face of US sanctions against both countries.

Fidel Castrowho assumed power in Cuba in 1959, is not remembered with statues in his homeland because, his brother Raúl said after his death in 2016, he wanted to avoid a cult of personality.

But Putin evoked his memory when he told Díaz-Canel that the two countries needed to build on the “solid foundation of friendship” established between Castro and Soviet leaders.

“It’s a true work of art: dynamic, moving, advancing. It creates the image of a fighter,” Putin said of the statue, which depicts Castro looking into the distance with one hand on his hip.

Díaz-Canel, for his part, said through a translator: “I think it reflects Fidel’s personality in the fight, as we find ourselves in the fight today.”

Russia, battered by Western sanctions over the Ukraine conflict, is seeking to strengthen political and economic ties with other countries that oppose what it calls US hegemony.

Cuba has been under a US economic embargo since 1962 after the Castro-led revolution in 1959.

Addressing the Russian parliament, Díaz-Canel showed his solidarity by directly endorsing Moscow’s stated justification for sending its troops to Ukraine.

The reasons for the current conflict in this area must be found in the aggressive policy of the United States and the expansion of NATO towards the borders of Russia,” he said.

Ukraine and its Western allies reject that argument as a specious pretext for an illegal occupation.

Under the Castro presidency, Cuba was a close ally of Moscow and found itself at the center of one of the most serious crises of the Cold War era when, in 1962, the United States detected the construction of Soviet rocket platforms in the Caribbean island to fire ballistic missiles capable of hitting US cities.

The hot topic, known as the Cuban Missile Crisis, nearly brought the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war.

US President Joe Biden said last month the world was closer to “Armageddon” than at any time since, as the conflict in Ukraine has raised fears of a broader confrontation between Russia and NATO.

Asked about possible parallels, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “The crises are different, although both then and now we are talking about a clash between us and the collective US-led West.”

And he added: “The experience of the Caribbean crisis has been studied and will continue to be studied, but that will not be the main thing in the talks” between Putin and Díaz-Canel.

The Cuban leader is in Russia, the second stop on a tour that initially took him to Algeria. He will also visit Turkey and China.