Canadian warship sharing an anchorage with Russian vessels in Cuba
Canadian warship sharing an anchorage with Russian vessels in Cuba
The Royal Canadian Navy now finds itself in the unusual position of both shadowing Russian warships as a threat in the Caribbean and sharing an anchorage with them as a guest in the port of Havana — because Canada accepted an invitation to send a patrol ship to Cuba while the Russian navy is in town.
And it's not clear just who in government or the military knew about the invitation from Cuba. The Caribbean nation has been a full-throated supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin's war on Ukraine and Cubans have been fighting alongside Russian soldiers in that country.
A spokesperson for the Department of National Defence (DND) told CBC News on Friday that the department was aware the Russians would be in Havana port on the same days as the Canadians.
But when asked about the visit on CBC's Power and Politics on Thursday evening, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly told host David Cochrane she knew nothing about it.
I didn't know Cuba was actively supporting Russia. I just changed my position from "end the US embargo" to "everyone else should join the embargo". Supporting Russia is supporting genocide.
The embargo is the reason they're still so friendly with Russia. Ending the embargo would be a massive step towards friendly relations with the US and less with Russia.
The funniest part is Cubans have better medical care than the American working class, including completely novel vaccines that have existed for decades that America doesn’t let its citizens have lmao
Ok? Tell the Cubans in Florida that.
If we could end the embargo in exchange to them telling Putin to get fucked, I'd be all for it, but I don't think there's enough trust on either side for that to work right now.
Yeah, I had a much more positive view of Cuba before reading that.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
And yet, on Friday Canada's Harry DeWolf-class offshore patrol vessel HMCS Margaret Brooke sailed into Havana as a guest of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba, just hours after the Russian flotilla docked in the same harbour.
Three days later, the frigate HMCS Fredericton set sail for Havana for a visit then-defence minister Harjit Sajjan said would celebrate the "strong, positive and productive relationship" between Cuba and Canada.
"Amidst global insecurity, Canada believes in pragmatic diplomacy to engage countries of different perspectives while we continue to uphold our values and interests and defend the international rules-based order," he told CBC News.
The friendly visit sends a confusing message about Canada's allegiances, said Russian political scientist Vladimir Rouvinski, director of the CIES Research Center at Icesi University, Colombia and an expert on Russia's presence in the Western hemisphere.
"The Canadian Armed Forces will continue to track the movements and activities of the Russian naval flotilla" after it departs Havana, Kened Sadiku of DND told CBC News.
"In the minds of the Cuban elite, Canada is not a friend, it's a country that they can — I don't want to use the word manipulate, but they can kind of dance around and make them act in ways that would not align totally with the main enemy, which obviously is the United States," he said.
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There are times when it's downright embarrassing to be a Canadian, especially when the entrenched info silos of our gov't and military lead to incidents like this.
We're gonna have egg on our faces for a while because of this clusterpuck.
Eh. Russia is sabre rattling while protecting some of its fleet from Ukrainian attacks. A Canadian warship just sitting idly next to them in the same port is not exactly a good display of Russian strength.
Yeah. Not embarrassed about this at all. And a narrative that I should be is bizzare to me.
In the "show of strength" column, one also notes that unlike the Russian contingent, the Canadian warship (the HMCS Margaret Brooke, apparently) is not traveling in the company of an ocean-going tug (the Nikolay Chiker) to address the possibility that it breaks down and has to be towed back.
I don't think that this is protecting it from Ukrainian attack, though. The Black Sea Fleet is the one at risk there. This will be from the Russian (kagis for Admiral Gorshkov) Northern Fleet, their Arctic ships.
Actually, the Northern Fleet is the one that the Canadians actually are most-likely to be the ones to have to pay attention to. The US can sail submarines under the icepack, but has very limited icebreaker capacity, can't operate much by way of surface ships in the Arctic. That's mostly on the Canucks and the Norwegians, as things stand.
EDIT: Apparently that might actually be a Ukrainian attack. I was in a conversation on this in !noncredibledefense@sh.itjust.works the other day. Apparently, in the Soviet Union, Ukraine built all the big gas turbine engines for warships. (The Admiral Gorshkov uses a gas turbine engine.) Then Russia invaded Ukraine, and Ukraine decided that they weren't going to be selling Russia any replacements or spare parts as long as that was going on. Russia built a gas turbine factory, UEC Saturn, but it's very constrained in capacity, can't produce new stuff at the rate Russia needs them, so it sounds like Russia is probably running engines longer than they're supposed to be run.
Maybe so, but at least you guys aren't Russia or Cuba.
Cuba might get the short end of this one. If it becomes too embarrassing for our military/government they might cut off relations. And Canadian tourism is a big sustainer of Cuban coffers. Canada could cut off that income by blocking travel there, or even just declaring it as an "avoid all travel" zone, effectively cutting off tourism.
The truth is, we don't know what's going on. Maybe this was a deliberate decision to get closer to the Russians without triggering an incident. Maybe the US knew about this and approved it. Maybe it was a blunder, but we can't just assume it was.
Did you even read the article?
Your reaction is what makes it embarassing.
Show up where you wanna show up. Acting like a little baby because of who else might be there? What is this, a jr high girls sleepover?
The Russian Navy doesn't dictate where Canadian ships operate.