Putin deputy: no quid pro quo with Cuba for Abkhazia recognition

Russian Deputy Prime Minsiter Igor Sechin apparently blew his top after Kommersant published an article suggesting that Russian financial support for Cuba was being linked to recognition of the breakaway Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia: The Miami Herald reports: In an article Feb. 12 in the daily Kommersant, reporter Andrei Odinets said that ...

By , a former associate editor at Foreign Policy.

Russian Deputy Prime Minsiter Igor Sechin apparently blew his top after Kommersant published an article suggesting that Russian financial support for Cuba was being linked to recognition of the breakaway Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia: The Miami Herald reports:

Russian Deputy Prime Minsiter Igor Sechin apparently blew his top after Kommersant published an article suggesting that Russian financial support for Cuba was being linked to recognition of the breakaway Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia: The Miami Herald reports:

In an article Feb. 12 in the daily Kommersant, reporter Andrei Odinets said that Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s tour of Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Mexico was intended to restart – in the aftermath of the Caucasus war – Moscow’s "diplomatic offensive in Latin America, which last year began to choke."

"It is possible that Moscow will encourage Russian investment in Cuba’s mineral riches if Havana announces its recognition of [South Ossetia and Abkhazia]," Odinets wrote. "Russia already has worked such a scheme in Venezuela," trading oil-exploration money for diplomatic support, he said..

In an angry letter to Kommersant on Monday, Sechin derided Odinets as a self-appointed expert in foreign policy and an inept journalist. Some of Odinets’ information was "biased and untrue," Sechin said. The reporter’s allegation that Cuba’s diplomatic support could be purchased was "detrimental to the principles of [Russo-Cuban] cooperation and long-term friendship, historically based on the shared values and trust acquired during the long and difficult years of working together."

In the friendship between Moscow and Havana "there is no place for cold financial calculation or ambition," Sechin wrote.

 Strangely, in the letter, Sechin doesn’t seem to deny that there was quid-pro-quo in the other countries that have recognized the breakaway regions, just that such cynical maneuvering would be unthinkable given the long history of Cuban-Russian cooperation. Is he suggesting that there is room for cold financial calculation in the frienship between Moscow and Caracas or Moscow and Managua? I’m not even going to ask about Nauru.

Joshua Keating was an associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @joshuakeating

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