At about the same time that US and Russian aircraft made visual contact Saturday, negotiators for the countries were meeting for a second time on protocols on the distance between aircraft, common languages and radio frequencies that the two forces will employ to avoid mishaps or collisions.
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Up to 300 troops, led by General Leopoldo Cintra Frías, the head of Cuba’s armed forces, arrived in Syria this week, according to the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami. He says more often Russian Federation aircraft have flown near USA drones, perhaps to get a closer look at the high-tech aircraft.
More than 250,000 people have died and more than 4 million have been displaced by the Syrian civil war. “The Russians have been training the Cubans for years and supplying them with all sorts of military equipment”.
Now, with the Cuban military personnel arriving to assist the Syrian military, Obama’s efforts to support moderate rebels in Syria appear even more impotent than the training program turned out to be.
Earlier this year, President Barack Obama announced that the tenuous relationship between the United States and Cuba was over and the USA would be re-establishing normalized relations with Cuba.
The official could not confirm whether Cuba’s top general is in Syria, or if Cuban forces are manning Russian tanks provided to Assad by Russia.
The analysis also reveals that this alliance is in fact an old one, and its reputation precedes it: in the 1970s Fidel Castro sent “several hundred thousand troops to Angola and other African countries, while the Soviets provided weapons to support African leaders attempting to gain power in their countries”. Cuba also sent troops to Syria in 1973 to support them in the Yom Kippur War against Israel and deployed officers to observe Israeli military tactics.
Cuba has entered Syria’s conflict alongside Russian and Syrian regime forces, a US-based monitoring group has said, making it the latest state to become embroiled in the proxy war dividing the world along old Cold War lines.
“If this information about the presence of Cuban troops in Syria now is confirmed, it would indicate that Gen. Raul Castro is more interested in supporting his allies, Russian Federation and Syria, than in continuing to normalize relations with the USA”, said the institute.
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Syria’s Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday that Europe was trying to misrepresent the Russian intervention, which it said had “demonstrated the credibility and determination of the Russian and Syrian leadership to combat terrorism”.
