Military and political cooperation between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Cuba in the first quarter of the 21st century

The article examines the problem of the development of military and political cooperation between Russia and Cuba at the beginning of the 21st century. The relevance of the topic is determined by the current geopolitical activity of Russia, which seeks to develop relations, particularly with Cuba, which already had close military and political ties with the USSR. The current stage of cooperation started with an unfriendly step towards Cuba – the closure of the Lourdes Radio station. The novelty of the work is caused by the concentration of attention on the military and political part of the relations between Russia and Cuba. The focus on the closure of the Lourdes station, as the lowest point in the cooperation, provides an opportunity to follow the consistent development of Russian-Cuban relations in a new modern format. The methodological basis in the article is provided by general scientific, historical research methods and methods of political science. The paper examines the key military-political agreements between the countries and real allied actions in the 21st century. The analysis of the cooperation shows that Russian-Cuban relations which were in decline after the closure of the Lourdes center, gradually began to develop again, and led to the almost complete restoration of the previous level of trust by the early 2020s and the resumption of strategic cooperation. At the same time despite the restoration of allied relations, the real level of the military and political cooperation is an order of magnitude lower than the Soviet-Cuban one. The prospects for its further development strongly depend on the economic efforts of the two countries, financial capabilities and stability of their political regimes.

Republic of Cuba, Russian Federation, military-political cooperation, Russian-Cuban relations, Vladimir Putin, strategic cooperation, Miguel Diaz-Canel, Raul Castro, Lourdes SIGINT station, Cuban Revolutionary Army