After Wagner revolt, Russian defense minister Shoigu meets with head of Cuba’s armed forces
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu hosted Cuba’s Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, Gen. Alvaro Lopez Miera, ion Tuesday in what appears to be his first public meeting with a foreign official after the Wagner mercenary group’s boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin, led a brief armed rebellion and demanded his dismissal.
The meeting with the Cuban military delegation, reported by Russian state media, is another signal of the two countries’ close relationship amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Shoigu called Cuba its “key alley” in the Caribbean while announcing the two governments were planning to develop “military-technical cooperation projects,” the Russian official news agency Tass reported.
“Cuba has always been and continues to be Russia’s key ally in the region. Our Cuban friends have confirmed their attitude toward our country by demonstrating a complete understanding of the goals of the special military operation in Ukraine,” he said in on-camera remarks released by the Ministry of Defense.
The Cuban general, which is under U.S. sanctions for his role in crushing anti-government protests in July 2021, said the United States’ “intention to continue the expansion of NATO to Russia’s borders... forced Russia to launch a special military operation. In this context, Russia plays a leading role in the fight against fascism.”
Prigozhin’s rivalry with Shoigu was behind the Wagner Group’s move to seize a military headquarters in southern Russia and march towards Moscow on Saturday. But Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, quickly ended the mutiny with a deal to send Prigozhin and his mercenaries to neighboring Belarus.
Cuba’s leadership seems to have been concerned about the chaotic events. Cuba’s handpicked president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, a frequent social media user, remained silent most of Saturday and waited until news of the deal to tweet his “solidarity of the people and government of Cuba to the esteemed President Putin.”
A flurry of recent trips of diplomats, military and security officials between Havana and Moscow after the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February last year have consolidated the close partnership, and several business deals have been announced, though they have yet to yield concrete results.
Earlier this year, the secretary of the Russian Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the speaker of the State Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, visited Cuba.
Earlier this month, Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero met with Putin during an 11-day trip to Russia in which Russian officials promised to continue supplying oil to the island. And the Russian president gave the Order of Friendship medal to Gen. Lopez Miera.