Canadian Navy ship join US, Russian subs in Cuba

AFP | Havana, Cuba

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

A Canadian Navy patrol ship docked Friday in Cuba, which is also hosting two nuclear-powered submarines -- one American and one Russian. The HMCS Margaret Brooke docked in Havana on its way back from "a successful deployment in the Caribbean basin," the Royal Canadian Navy said on Facebook.

It "will conduct a port visit to Havana from June 14 to 17, 2024, in recognition of the long-standing bilateral relationship between Canada and Cuba," it added.

It was the Navy's first visit to Havana since 2016 and to Cuba since 2018, said the statement. A US nuclear-powered submarine arrived in Cuba, the Pentagon said Thursday, a day after a Russian nuclear sub also docked there.

The fast-attack submarine USS Helena was in Guantanamo Bay as part of a routine port visit, previously planned, the US Southern Command said.

The Russian nuclear-powered sub Kazan -- which Cuba said was not carrying nuclear weapons -- arrived in the Cuban capital Wednesday. It was accompanied by the frigate Admiral Gorshkov, as well as an oil tanker and a salvage tug. The unusual Russian deployment so close to the United States -- just 90 miles off the Florida coast -- came amid major tensions over the war in Ukraine, where the Western-backed government is fighting a Russian invasion.

The United States military said it had been monitoring the Russian ships and they posed no direct threat. During the Cold War, Cuba was an important client state for the Soviet Union. The deployment of Soviet nuclear missile sites on the island triggered the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when Washington and Moscow came close to war.