Russia, Cuba Agree on Security Cooperation

Russia, Cuba Agree on Security Cooperation
VOA News
May 14, 2014 5:50 PM

Russia's Security Council and Cuba's Commission for National Security
and Defense have signed a memorandum on cooperation and agreed to
establish a joint working group, the secretary of the Russian Security
Council said Wednesday.

"The situation in the world is changing fast and it is dynamic. That's
why we will need the ability to react to it promptly," Nikolai Patrushev
said.

A Cuban delegation led by Col. Alejandro Castro Espin arrived in Moscow
on Tuesday and held a meeting with the leaders of the Russia's Foreign
Intelligence Service (SVR), Russia's primary external intelligence agency.

The delegation is also scheduled to meet with representatives from the
Federal Security Service (FSB), the principal security agency of the
Russian Federation and the main successor agency to the Soviet Union's
Committee of State Security, or KGB.

"Russia and Cuba need an effective cooperation tool to respond to
sensitive issues. The memorandum may define priorities for cooperation
to ensure effective security of both states," said Castro Espin, who is
Cuban leader Raul Castro's son.

Patruschev has been linked in recent years to the rapprochement between
Moscow and Havana. In the 1970s, he worked with Russian President
Vladimir Putin in the KGB.

Cold War redux

Guillermo Fariñas Hernández, a well-known Cuban dissident who won the
Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 2010, told martinoticias.com
the intelligence sharing can be seen as "a resumption of the Cold War in
retaliation for recent moves by NATO and the United States with respect
to Ukraine."

"They [NATO and the U.S.] are now physically close to the Russian
border, and they [the Russians], in retaliation, have appeared somewhere
close to U.S. territory to compensate for this development," he said.

"Russia will resume its position on the island of Cuba [in order to]
influence Central and South America [as well as] the United States
itself," Fariñas Hernandez said.

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