(Claudia Daut/Reuters)
Admiral Chabanenko in Havana bay. The Russian warship is the first to enter Cuba since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991
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Russian warships pulled into Havana yesterday for the first time since the end of the Soviet era in the last port of call on an expedition designed to send a message to Washington about the military reach of Moscow.
The five-day stop in Cuba, a Soviet-era ally with whom Russia is reviving relations, is designed to test the enthusiasm of Barack Obama, the President-elect, for plans by his predecessor for military expansion in Eastern Europe.
Russia sent an ageing flotilla to the Caribbean in September for wargames with Venezuela, a month after US warships sailed into the Black Sea in the aftermath of the war in Georgia.
Moscow was furious at the US incursion into what Vladimir Putin has described as its “privileged sphere of influence” in the former Eastern bloc. The crisis also brought to a head US plans for a missile defence system with bases in Poland and the Czech Republic, formulated by President Bush.
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Washington has continued to press for Nato to admit the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Ukraine. By sending its warships to the Western hemisphere, Moscow plans to show that it too can flex its muscles in an adversary’s backyard.
Its cruise through Venezuelan and Panamanian waters have ruffled frustratingly few feathers in Washington. Asked how it felt to watch the first Russian warship since the Second World War to transit the Panama Canal, Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, said: “I guess they’re on R&R. It’s fine.”
The open alliance between Russia and Cuba came in the wake of the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion and led to the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 when US military photographs showed Soviet missile bases being built on the island.
Americans lived on the brink of nuclear war for two weeks until a deal was made to dismantle the bases. Washington then agreed to withdraw missiles aimed at Moscow.
The commander of Russia’s strategic missile forces announced yesterday that Moscow was ready to abandon plans to renew its entire nuclear missile arsenal if Washington halted deployment of the Eastern European stage of the missile shield.
Under current plans Russia will replace its Soviet-era nuclear missile arsenal by 2020 with systems that it says will be able to overcome new defences such as the missile shield.
“If the Americans give up their plans to deploy the third position area and other elements of strategic missile defence, then undoubtedly we will respond in kind,” Colonel-General Nikolai Solovtsov said.
Russia could do without the expense of replacing its arsenal. Some analysts say that all Russia has achieved with its Caribbean cruise is a reminder of how far gone its days of naval glory really are.
The Russian Navy is a shadow of its Soviet-era force, with many ships and submarines rusting away from lack of investment. Neglect has contributed to several deadly accidents, such as the sinking of the Kursk nuclearpowered submarine in 2000.
Cuban missile crisis
1962 Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader, ships nuclear missiles to Cuba that could hit the US
August 29, 1962 US spy aircraft report military construction and the presence of Soviet technicians
October 22, 1962 President Kennedy announces a naval quarantine on Cuba. Most Soviet ships avoid the area except for three ships and four nuclear-armed submarines, which stop only after a US warship intercepts them
October 28, 1962 Deal is reached between the Russians and US
Sources: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Times Archive
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