Vladimir Putin has sent a powerful fleet of warships to Cuba on Wednesday (12-June) ahead of planned military exercises in the Caribbean. It was a calculated move to flex Russian muscle in the backyard of the United States. Just roughly 90 miles (150 kilometres) away from its traditional enemy U.S., Cuba provides the best parking spot for Russia to provoke Washington.

While it is not the first time Russian navy ships have visited Cuba, this is the first time that the Kremlin sent a nuclear-powered submarine, which becomes a major attraction as Cubans rushed to snap photos. People wearing Russian flags were seen admiring – for the first time in their life – the gigantic Russian Kazan submarine, a Yasen-class sub which was first commissioned in May 2021.

Arriving at the Havana port, the K-561 Kazan submarine is armed with Kalibr supersonic cruise missiles and P-800 Onyx cruise missiles. At speed of Mach 2.9 (3,550 km/h or 2,210 mph), the Kalibr could destroy Florida before even Washington knew what hit them. The sub also carries Zircon nuclear-capable hypersonic cruise missile, capable of travelling at Mach 9 (nine times the speed of sound).

Leading the fleet is frigate Admiral Gorshkov, one of the Russian navy’s most modern models. Like the Kazan sub, the warship is also equipped with Kalibr and Zircon hypersonic missiles, not to mention Onyx anti-ship cruise missiles. Commissioned in 2018, Gorshkov is capable of long-range missile attacks and anti-submarine warfare while being difficult to detect due to stealth technology.

Accompanied by Pashin oil tanker and rescue tugboat Nikolai Chiker, the convoy was welcomed by Cuba – a longtime ally of Russia – with a 21-gun salute. While Cuba was sending a message to the U.S. that it still has a powerful friend like Russia, the four Russian vessels were deployed to send a warning to the U.S. that Moscow too can hit Washington if Putin wanted to.

The stunning arrival of the Russian warships in the Cuban water comes after Washington and its other Western allies allowed Ukraine to use their weapons on targets inside Russia. It is a reminder to the U.S. that Moscow could re-create the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when the world plunged into the prospect of its first Nuclear War as Russia deployed nuclear missiles to Cuba on America’s doorstep.

The Cuban Missile Crisis erupted in 1962 when then-Soviet Union retaliated to a U.S. missile deployment in Turkey and Italy by sending ballistic missiles to Cuba, sparking a 13-day standoff between Washington and Moscow. An agreement was eventually reached between U.S. President Kennedy and Soviet Premier Khrushchev – Soviets and Americans would dismantle their respective missiles.

This time, the U.S. officials have downplayed the deployment, arguing that it is a usual port call between Russia and Cuba. Yet, despite claiming that it doesn’t see a threat, the U.S. has scrambled six warships – three U.S. Navy destroyers (USS Donald Cook, USS Delbert Black and USS Truxton), a Coast Guard ship, the Canadian frigate HMCS Ville de Quebec, and a French Lafayette class frigate to monitor the Russian ships.

Additionally, the U.S. has also deployed fast-attack submarine USS Helena to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Assuring Washington that it has nothing to worry about, Cuban Foreign Ministry said none of the Russian warships would carry nuclear weapons and clarified that their presence “does not represent a threat to the region”. Thanks to American sanctions, Cuba is again depends on Russia.

In what appears to be the longest-lasting trade sanctions in modern history, the U.S. has since 1958 banned American entities from trading with Cuba – following Fidel Castro’s overthrow of a US-backed government. However, in 2015, Barack Obama decided to restore diplomatic ties with Cuba after 50 years, but his successor Donald Trump reversed course nearly four years later.

During its journey to Cuba, the Russian warships conducted drills in the Atlantic where they used high-precision missile weapons based on computer simulation for naval targets, destroying enemies located at a distance of over 600 km. Clearly, it was a show of military force as well as to remind Sleepy Joe about Russia’s ability to project power in the Western Hemisphere.

To avoid embarrassment, the U.S. has assured the public that none of the Russian warships carry nuclear weapons. Sure, if you believe a modern nuclear-powered submarine does not actually possess nuclear weapons, then you should also believe President Biden is still a virgin. In truth, there’s absolutely nothing the U.S. can do even if both Russia and Cuba declare that the warships are armed with nuclear warheads.

As Ukraine is losing its war against Russia, despite US$60 billion of U.S. aid, Biden could lose the 2024 presidential election. Therefore, the U.S. president has recklessly given the green light to Ukraine to hit targets on Russian soil with American long-range weapons. In response, president Putin warned that Russia too could provide long-range weapons to others to strike Western targets.

Putin said – “If they consider it possible to deliver such weapons to the combat zone to launch strikes on our territory and create problems for us, why don’t we have the right to supply weapons of the same type to some regions of the world where they can be used to launch strikes on sensitive facilities of the countries that do it to Russia?”

While Ukraine has more than 1,300 Russian troops as “prisoner of war”, more than 6,400 Ukrainian soldiers are being held in Russia. Putin has claimed that Ukraine’s casualties are five times greater than Russia’s. Worse, not only Russia’s economy has been resilient to the Western sanctions and even seen growth driven by the war, it has also managed to produce a lot of its own equipment and ammunition. 

On top of deliveries from Iran and North Korea dual-use technology, Russia also receives electrical components and machine tools for arms manufacture from China, the world’s second largest economy. The Western nations have been humiliated so much so that NATO was considering sending “trainers” into Ukraine, prompting warnings from Moscow that they would become legitimate targets.

If indeed the U.S. was neither surprised nor terrified of the docking of the Russian naval ships in Cuba as claimed, it did not need to scramble so many assets just to shadow them. Putin was obviously trying to provoke – even to humiliate – Biden by showing the rest of the world how Russia can operate in America’s backyard anytime he wants.

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June 14th, 2024 by financetwitter

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