It’s also allowed Putin to restore some of Russia’s former glory in a region that has long resented Washington’s far longer history of meddling.Īs Putin now looks to repel NATO from what he calls Russia’s “near abroad” in Ukraine, he’s likely to take at least a symbolic poke at the U.S. Recently Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega named a consul in the Crimean peninsula Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014. With the collapse of its communist sponsor in the early 1990s, Cuba spiraled into a depression marked by widespread hunger known as the “Special Period.”īut Russia’s more limited support has bought it friends. Nicaragua’s Punta Huete airfield is today semi-abandoned and President Vladimir Putin closed the spy station in Cuba two decades ago. It’s all a far cry from the height of the Cold War, when Nikita Khrushchev in 1962 briefly placed nuclear missiles in Cuba, the Kremlin maintained a listening post less than 100 miles from Florida and the Sandinista government that was fighting a U.S.-backed right-wing insurgency in Nicaragua was building an airbase to accommodate Soviet fighter jets. It also outperforms most other Spanish-language media on the platform, though it’s still dwarfed by CNN en Espanol. On social media, the Spanish-language arm of the Russian state-controlled RT television network has more than 18 million followers on Facebook, 10 times as many as the Spanish-language affiliate of Voice of America, according to the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a think tank that tracks the rise of authoritarianism around the world. officials on Russian attempts to penetrate the communications of the country’s top military command, a person familiar with the visit told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive issue. A senior Colombian military official recently traveled to Washington to brief U.S. Russia sent more Tu-160s in 2018 as relations with the West plunged to post-Cold War lows over Ukraine, and the military even hinted it was considering setting up an airbase on tiny La Orchilla Island, so small that landing military aircraft there would have been nearly impossible.Įven in countries friendlier to the U.S., like Mexico and Colombia, Russia has been accused of spying or engaging in disinformation campaigns to shape elections. over Russia’s brief war with Georgia, a deployment followed that year by the arrival of the “Peter the Great” warship. In 2008, Moscow sent a pair of Tu-160 nuclear-capable bombers to Venezuela amid tensions with the U.S. Time and again, Russia has shown a willingness to leverage its sizable military whenever it has felt threatened by the U.S. Moscow helped Venezuela design a cryptocurrency, forgave a $35 billion Cuba debt and runs a high-tech anti-narcotics compound in Nicaragua that many believe is a covert beachhead for spying across the region. influence in the region has waned, Moscow - and to a lesser extent other far-flung adversaries like China and Iran - have quietly cemented ties with authoritarian governments in Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela through a mix of weapons sales, financing deals and intense diplomatic engagement. policymakers have referred to as “Washington’s backyard.” It’s a showpiece and nothing more.”īut even if talk of troop deployments is mostly bluster, Russia’s strategic buildup in Latin America is real, posing national security threats in what generations of U.S. ambassador to Colombia who also served as a diplomat in Venezuela, Nicaragua and as head of the Office of Cuban Affairs in Washington. “This is pure misdirection and it’s not fooling anyone,” said Kevin Whitaker, a former U.S. On the heels of its massive troop buildup on its border with Ukraine, Russia’s ability to mobilize troops in the Western Hemisphere, thousands of miles away, is limited at best, experts contend. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan quickly dismissed Russia’s tit-for-tat threats. and NATO insist on meddling on Russia’s doorstep. In recent days, several senior Russian officials have warned Moscow could deploy troops or military assets to Cuba and Venezuela if the U.S. refusal to heed its demands could spur closer military cooperation with allies in Latin America. Russia is once again rattling its saber amid rising tensions over Ukraine, hinting that the U.S.
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