Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov walks with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on February 16 in Caracas. Rayner Peña R. (EFE)
Whatever the outcome of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, its aftermath will be felt in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The escalation occurs after the relaunch of relations between Russia and the region that Moscow has promoted.
Although in the years of the pandemic the commercial exchange with Russia has been reduced, the trend of the commercial and investment link, especially with Brazil, Argentina and Chile, has been growing since the first decade of the 21st century.
Moscow has deployed its repositioning in Latin America and the Caribbean through two poles.
While in the Southern Cone he pragmatically conducts economic relations based on comparative advantages, in the Caribbean, especially in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, he encourages a type of centrally geopolitical and ideological link.
Although energy and military collaboration with these governments has also grown, the axis of the links has to do with their tensions with the United States.
In the weeks before the invasion, some diplomatic scenes reflected the importance of Latin America for the Kremlin.
The presidents of Argentina and Brazil, Alberto Fernández and Jair Bolsonaro, traveled to Moscow.
The first presented the visit as part of a diplomacy based on multipolarity.
The second, who like Donald Trump does not hide his admiration for Vladimir Putin, traveled with his defense minister, Walter Souza Braga Neto, and Foreign Minister Carlos Alberto Franca, raising the geopolitical profile of Itamaraty's bet in Moscow.
A week before the invasion, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borizov toured Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba, where he met with Presidents Nicolás Maduro, Daniel Ortega and Miguel Díaz-Canel.
During the tour, those governments expressed their solidarity with Russia in the face of the threat to its security from NATO and the United States.
When Putin announced the "special military operation" against Ukraine, the president of the Duma, Viacheslav Volodin, was in Havana.
During that visit, he announced a restructuring of Cuba's debt with Russia, for more than two billion dollars, and it transpired that Havana would recognize the republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.
As soon as the invasion began, the vast majority of Latin American and Caribbean governments spoke out against it.
Some called for an immediate ceasefire and deplored the use of force.
Others, like the Mexican, after initial ambivalent messages, "strongly condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine" and recalled that Latin American and Caribbean countries have been victims of similar invasions by the United States.
The Mexican ambassador to the UN, Juan Ramón de la Fuente, in his speech at the Security Council, questioned Moscow's veto, pointed out that Russia's "aggression" violated the UN Charter and set a disastrous precedent for peace global.
In Chile, both the government and the opposition took a position against the invasion, through statements by Sebastián Piñera and Gabriel Boric, outgoing and incoming presidents of that South American nation.
In Bolivia, on the other hand, former President Evo Morales blamed only the United States and NATO for the crisis, while the government of Luis Arce voted against Russia at the UN.
In Colombia, the emphasis of criticism was placed on the side of the government of Iván Duque, causing isolationist statements by the opposition leader Gustavo Petro, who called for not turning their eyes to the conflict in Ukraine and concentrating on Colombian domestic problems.
In Brazil, on the other hand, the opposition capitalized on the rejection of the invasion through the energetic positioning of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the main opposition candidate, the PT and some leaders of social democracy such as Geraldo Alckmin, who is already emerging as a possible running mate of the left, to confront Bolsonaro.
The Brazilian Foreign Ministry made calls of "concern" about the military escalation and encouraged a "viability of peace", but when Vice President Hamilton Mourao demanded a military response from the West to Russia, Bolsonaro disavowed him and clarified, in front of Foreign Minister Franca, that the president was the only one empowered to speak about the conflict in Ukraine.
The Russian invasion has generated quite general rejection in the region, with the exception of the three countries governed by allies of Russia: Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.
From the beginning, the three governments sent messages of alignment and solidarity with Moscow, endorsing the central thesis of the Kremlin: Russia was being cornered by NATO and the leadership of Ukraine fell into the hands of a neo-Zani and genocidal group, ready to seriously threaten the national security of the great Eurasian country.
Although in Venezuela and Nicaragua there have been no changes in that original position, in Cuba there are nuances of interest.
After an initial position by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, some leaders and the main media, which indicated that Russia was being attacked by NATO and should take defensive actions, a new statement by the Cuban government, on Saturday, February 26, indicated that the island was against the use of force, that it maintained relations with Ukraine and that it respected the UN Charter, in an indirect allusion to the Russian attack against Ukrainian sovereignty.
However, the same statement points out that the main and original responsibility for the conflict lies with the United States and Europe and that Russia has the right to defend itself, which can only be interpreted as a moral justification for Putin's preventive war.
Perhaps the inconsistency of basing the core of its ideology on the sovereignty of a small Caribbean country, harassed by the great hemispheric power, and at the same time defending an imperial occupation in Eastern Europe, forced the Cuban leadership not to totally abandon, in this conflict, the premise of the self-determination of peoples.
In any case, Havana's final position continues to be on the side of Moscow and in favor of this unilateral intervention, as questionable as all those undertaken by the United States and NATO in recent decades.
At the UN, Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua opposed the invasion of Ukraine being debated in the General Assembly and, during last Tuesday's session, they were in the minority that denounced opposition to the war as "double standards" and backs Moscow's claim that the Ukraine invasion be seen as an act of legitimate defense against the US, Europe and NATO expansion.
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