(NewsNation Now) — Cuba has long been a source of concern to the United States given its geographical proximity and ties to the former Soviet Union.
While Russian missiles and tanks wage war on the other side of the world, it is easy to forget about Russia’s allies in the Western Hemisphere.
Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba — which is just 90 miles off the Florida coast.
Russian Navy ships and submarines have been in the area in the past, docked at Cuban ports over the last decade.
Enrique Amor has seen the Cuban-Russian relationship up close.
He was working at the port in Cuba when Russian supplies arrived during the Cuban missile crisis back in 1962.
“The first boat arrived at the dead of night. The port authority went to check on the boat and the military took him out,” he said.
The crisis escalated into a tense, 13-day standoff between the U.S. and the then Soviet Union over the installation of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles in Cuba, leaving many people fearing the world was on the brink of nuclear war.
James M. Acton, co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said he does not believe nuclear war is currently imminent, but there is a real potential for escalation.
Acton suggested finding an “off-ramp” that might allow Russian President Vladimir Putin a perceived victory. In 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis, the U.S. secretly agreed to remove nuclear missiles from Turkey in exchange for the Soviets pulling back from Cuba.
Based on what he witnessed back then, Amor remains concerned today over Cuba’s relationship with Russia.
“With that kind of government system, anything is possible,” he said.
Country after country lashed out against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but Putin had a few supporters at the U.N. General Assembly meeting on Wednesday, including Cuba.
Cuba and Nicaragua abstained from the vote condemning the Russian invasion.
Cuban Ambassador Pedro Luis Cuesta blamed what he called the crisis in Ukraine on what he said is the U.S. determination to keep expanding NATO toward Russia’s borders as well as the delivery of modern weapons to Ukraine, ignoring Russia’s concerns for its own security.
Cuesta said the draft resolution to demand that Russia stop its offensive in Ukraine and withdraw all troops “suffers from lack of balance” and doesn’t begin to address the concerns of both parties or “the responsibility of those who took aggressive actions which precipitated the escalation of this conflict.”
Ukraine’s government blasted Cuba’s support for the Russian invasion.
Is there a reason to be concerned with Cuba just 90 miles off the coast of Florida?
“It is possible that Putin would want to move into Cuba the way that Khrushchev did in the 1960s, but I don’t think it is very likely at this point,” Dr. Leah Blumenfeld, associate professor of political science at Barry University in Miami, said.
Blumenfeld said that while what is happening now does have some similarities to the Cuban missile crisis, it was a very different situation.
She’s concerned for European countries closer to Russia but says at this point, she does not suspect Russian troops would end up near the U.S.
“I don’t think it would be strategically sound for Russia to expand its aggression into the Western Hemisphere in such a way,” Blumenfeld said.
In at least one way, Cuba is governed much like Russia, as protests are not allowed. There are reports of Cubans being arrested in Havana for leaving flowers at the Ukrainian embassy.
