WHY AM I NOT SURPRISED? Cuba Mercenaries With Russian Forces In Ukraine
From an opinion piece in The Washington Times:
Havana traditionally supplied the fighting forces by which the Soviet Union’s ideological and military ambitions could be implemented across the developing world. Tens of thousands of Cuban troops, military advisers and doctors supported communist guerrillas and would-be despots in countries such as Ethiopia, Yemen, Angola and Grenada.
Now, more than three decades since the collapse of the USSR, a new generation of Cuban fighters is engaged in a Russian war, not under the banner of Marxist-Leninist fraternity but as contract soldiers.
With the number of Russian troops killed or wounded reaching potentially more than 800,000, Russia is bleeding more manpower than at any other time since the Second World War. To avoid the domestic political risks of further mobilizing Russians, President Vladimir Putin has turned to foreign mercenaries to plug this manpower gap.
More:
According to Dr. Orlando Gutierrez Boronat of the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance, 6,000 to 7,000 Cubans today are serving on the front lines in some of the most brutal battles of the war, with 10% of Cuban recruits dying in the first year of combat and 30% wounded. Ukrainian intelligence estimates that 20,000 Cubans have joined the Russian army since 2022.
North Korea in Ukraine, now Cuba. Cold War Russian Communist Empire comrades return as mercs. But they always were. In exchange for cheap Russian oil Castro spilled Cuban blood in Soviet peripheral wars waged in Africa and Latin America. As for the Russian 800,000 total casualties figure — Ukrainian sources claim it’s over one million.
