Cuba’s complicated relationship with Russia

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 24/05/2024 (496 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It was hard not to notice all the Russians in Cuba.

Having just returned from a recent two-week visit to Cuba, I couldn’t help but notice a couple of interesting differences from my trip last year. Most of these are admittedly impressionistic, but they did register on my radar screen as worthy of highlighting.

Let’s begin with the conspicuous explosion of Russian travellers populating the Caribbean island nation.

Oh yes, the Russians are coming! Just about everywhere you turned, at least in the resort area of Varadero, you could hear the distinctive Russian language being spoken.

My first clue about the veritable Russian invasion was some of the signs posted at the Varadero airport. Of course, there were the typical messages conveyed in Spanish and English, but there was a noticeable inclusion this year of words in the Cyrillic characters of the Russian alphabet.

Furthermore, there are now roughly 20 weekly direct flights (with Nordwind and Aeroflot airlines) from Russia to Varadero, Cayo Coco and Havana. In fact, the Cuban government anticipates more than 200,000 Russian visitors (a new record) for 2024.

But with western, specifically European, restrictions on what airspace Russian airlines can enter, it is not easy for Russians to get to Cuba. Once they leave from a Moscow airport, they have to fly north toward the Barents Sea, continue along the coast of Norway and then fly south between Greenland and Iceland, before tracking a course off the coastline of North America and the Bahamas as they approach Varadero. With the addition of some 1,000 miles to the one-way trek to Cuba, the flight can actually take 13 hours or so.

Last year, I was stopped dead in my tracks on the beach in Varadero when I saw a large “Z” (a symbol of Russian support for the invasion of Ukraine) carved into the sand. I have to admit it was hard this year to listen to them talk about celebrating “Victory Day” in Russia on May 9.

Without generalizing too much, the Russians tend to be loud, smoke a great deal and treat their partners poorly — to say nothing of their drinking habits.

I got the impression the Cubans are not exactly huge fans of the Russians. They certainly don’t have a lot of faith or trust in the Russian word. But they are in the unenviable position of being lodged between an economic rock and a social hard place — and thus desperately need the Russians right now.

So what does this influx of Russian visitors mean for Cuba-Russia relations? More importantly, what does Vladimir Putin’s Moscow want from Havana?

There is little doubt that the Cubans would welcome Russian investment in hotel construction and other tourism-related infrastructure. There was even some speculation that Moscow was demanding the approval for, or the provision of, Russian-only hotels in Cuba. But the government of Miguel Diaz-Canel quickly put the kibosh on that idea.

Make no mistake, Havana is trying to roll out the red carpet for Russian sun-seekers by accepting payment in Russian rubles (rather than the preferred U.S. dollar). It has also created a new digital Russian payment system, largely through the use of a so-called Mir credit card, to facilitate financial transactions on the island.

Interestingly, the Russians, as far as I can detect, are barely supplying any crude oil for Cuba’s antiquated electrical grid, but they are apparently providing military hardware such as trucks, tanks and sundry ammunition.

With the war in Ukraine, the Kremlin is frantically looking for allies in various parts of the world, including Latin America. Cuba clearly has geostrategic import for Putin, allows Moscow to mess around in America’s “backyard,” and can use Havana to open economic and diplomatic doors into the wider region.

What Putin really wants is to exert control over Havana and to push the Cuban government in a direction most favourable to Moscow. Putin has already secured preferential treatment in Cuba to lease significant portions of land for 30 years and there are rumours swirling that the Russians want their own banks in Cuba so as to expedite capital extraction. Moreover, one senior Russian official actually called for a full-blown “Cuban perestroika” of major economic reforms.

There has been a bevy of high-level meetings between Cuban and Russian officials in recent months. Both countries obviously need each other, albeit for different reasons, but it is crystal clear that bilateral relations are growing increasingly more intertwined.

Of course, the Cubans need to be very careful here. One of the core principles of Cuban foreign policy is to emphasize counter-dependency, and to avoid being subservient to any one country. As the Cuban government knows only too well, the Russians have often shown themselves in the past to be fair-weather friends.

Peter McKenna is professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown.