Canadian warship arrives in Cuba after Russian and American ships

Canadian warship HMCS Margaret Brooke, Friday docked in Cuba, where two nuclear submarines, one Russian and the other American, arrived this week.

• Read more: “Routine visit”: Russian and US nuclear submarines to Cuba

• Read more: Images | Four Russian ships landed in Cuba, including a nuclear-powered submarine

AFP journalists noted that the Canadian ship arrived at the port of Havana this morning.

“This is the first time the Royal Canadian Navy has visited Havana since 2016,” Canadian Joint Operations Command said on its Facebook page.

The Canadian command said the visit, which is scheduled to continue until Monday, “recognizes the long-standing bilateral relationship” between the two countries.

On Wednesday, a Russian nuclear submarine Kazan Arrived at the port of the Cuban capital with the warship Admiral Gorshkov, as well as an oil tanker and a tugboat.

Cuba’s Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (Minfar) said last week that “none of the ships were carrying nuclear weapons” and that they were “not a threat to the region”.

The arrival of the naval battalion, about 150 km off the coast of Florida, comes against a backdrop of rising tensions between the US and Russia over the Ukraine war.

A US nuclear submarine is also in Cuba, the Pentagon announced Thursday. The USS is a nuclear-powered attack submarine Helena Located in Guantanamo Bay, the US naval base on the island is “as part of a routine visit,” US Southern Command said.

The United States said it was monitoring developments in Cuba, but said the deployment of the Russian ships did not pose a direct threat.

During the Cold War, Cuba was an ally of the Soviet Union. The discovery of Soviet missiles in Cuba in 1962 sparked a serious crisis that almost degenerated into war between the United States and the Soviet Union.