Cuba welcomes Russia minister as ‘a dear friend,’ suppresses news of Navalny’s death

Just days after the death in an Arctic penal colony of Russia’s most prominent opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, embarked on a Latin American tour with the first stop in Cuba on Monday and scheduled visits to Venezuela and Brazil.

Just like Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is believed to have never mentioned Navalny’s name publicly, it’s difficult to find any mention of the fierce Putin critic in Cuba’s state media, which did not report his death Friday ahead of Lavrov’s visit.

Instead, Cuban official media outlets, controlled by the Communist Party, welcomed the Russian minister “as a true friend of Cuba.”

“For us, it is a pleasure to welcome you back to Cuba,” said Cuba’s hand-picked president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, in remarks reported by Granma, the island’s biggest daily newspaper. “We do so with the feeling that we are receiving a true friend of Cuba, someone who has shown tremendous sensitivity and understanding toward our problems, and with whom we have always had a fluid exchange relationship.”

Lavrov, in turn, repeated that Cuba “is our traditional partner and our most important ally in Latin America and the Caribbean” and promised to continue expanding trade, investments and economic cooperation.

The top Russian diplomat also railed at the United States and the West for employing “blackmail, ultimatums, threats, the use of brute military force and sanctions” to “preserve their domination,” he told reporters in Havana.

A U.S. State Department official told the Herald Lavrov’s visit did not bode well for U.S.-Cuba relations.

“As we have noted previously, closer collaboration between the Cuban government and Russian military is not in Cuba’s interest and will negatively impact the U.S.-Cuba bilateral relationship,” the official said.

The official noted that Lavrov’s trip follows closely the visit by Belarus Minister of Defense Viktor Khrenin to Havana in late January and fresh reports of Cubans fighting alongside Russian forces in Ukraine.

In September, hacked documents showed Russia was recruiting impoverished Cuban men to join its army, lured by promises of $2,000-a-month salaries and Russian citizenship for their families. The Cuban government said it had dismantled the recruiting ring at the time and promised stiff punishments to those involved.

However, according to Ukrainian officials cited in a recent Wall Street Journal report, the recruiting efforts continued, and hundreds of Cubans are fighting in Ukraine. Some, like Raibel Palacio, the first Cuban mercenary whose death has been confirmed by family members, traveled to Russia in November, two months after the Cuban government said it had arrested 17 people involved in the recruiting network.

“We are concerned that Cuba continues to allow its citizens to be exploited in support of Russia’s war of aggression in violation of international law, including the UN Charter,” the State Department official said.

An economic lifeline

As Russia’s international isolation has increased over its invasion of Ukraine, it has strengthened its diplomatic and military ties with Cuba.

Military and security officials frequently meet both in Moscow and Havana. And Cuba has leaned on the relationship to ask Russia for credit and investments to lift the island’s economy from its current crisis. Cuban authorities promised Russian investors exclusive deals last year, like long-term land leases.

The Russian government has donated wheat, cooking oil and medical supplies to the island and given money to repair the island’s old train railroad system.

But despite the intense diplomatic activity — this is Lavrov’s ninth trip to the island as foreign minister since 2004 — Russia, a sanctioned country waging war, has yet to make more significant economic concessions to its Caribbean partner. Privately, Russian officials have joined calls on Cuban authorities to expand economic reforms to improve the island’s business climate, the Miami Herald learned.

The Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry said in a statement about Lavrov’s visit to Cuba that “key achievements” in economic cooperation between the two countries over the past year “will help Russian economic operators to play a more active role in the implementation of Cuba’s large-scale plans for socio-economic development until 2030.”

Russian tourism to the island has increased lately, with around 10 daily flights to Havana and other cities. Russians can now pay with their Mir bank cards while in Cuba.

In press remarks, Lavrov said his government has granted Cuba, which is struggling with frequent electricity blackouts, two credits to buy fuel and crude oil derivatives. “The second has only been formalized. But the supply is continuing,” the minister said.

Meet with Maduro In Venezuela

Lavrov continued his tour Tuesday in Venezuela, “a strategic partner and Russian ally,” where he is expected to meet the country’s strongman, Nicolás Maduro, according to a statement by the Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry. On Wednesday, he will attend a G-20 Summit, the first held in Brazil.

The leaders of the three Latin American nations on the tour have one thing in common: They are unlikely to challenge the Russian minister on Navalny’s death, which President Joe Biden and others have said was Vladimir Putin’s government’s responsibility.

The authoritarian rulers of Cuba and Venezuela are holding hundreds of dissidents and opposition members in their countries’ prisons.

And Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who in the past made controversial remarks suggesting Ukraine to cede Crimea to Russia, has avoided condemning Navalny’s death.

Asked about the death of the prominent dissident, Lula da Silva urged against “speculation” and “trivializing accusations.”

“Why this hurry to accuse someone?” he told reporters in a press conference during a trip to Ethiopia on Sunday. “So he died in prison. I don’t know if he was sick, if he had any problems.”

He also did not mention Navalny by name.