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.
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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