Claims that Moscow could soon send troops and hardware to Cuba, barely 100 miles off the US coast, should be ruled out because such a move would destroy the island nation’s hopes of normalizing relations with Washington, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has warned.
Speaking with journalists on Thursday, Medvedev, who held his country’s top job between 2008 and 2012 and is now Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of Russia, said that the two Latin American countries are close partners of Moscow, but are also sovereign nations who are “trying to escape from isolation and reestablish normal relations with the US to some extent.”
“We can’t deploy anything there,” he went on. “Even if, as is the case in Cuba, this is only because of their geopolitical position, their own national interests.” The ex-leader argued that there shouldn’t even be discussion of such a plan, because it would “provoke tension in the world.”