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00:00Amid rising global tensions over the war in Ukraine, four Russian ships,
00:03including a nuclear-powered submarine, will arrive in Cuba next week.
00:07Cuba's foreign ministry said that none of them will carry any nuclear weapons,
00:10and added that their presence does not represent threat to the region.
00:14During the Cold War, Cuba was an ally for the Soviet Union,
00:18and the deployment of Soviet nuclear missiles sites on the island
00:21triggered the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. That's when Washington and Moscow were close
00:27to war, the incident leading to the current embargo on Cuba, which remains in force.
00:33Ed Augustin reports from Havana.
00:36I think the backdrop of this is Cuba's huge economic crisis, and its increasing inability
00:43to keep the lights on. I'm speaking to you from Havana, where we're privileged. We've
00:47only had four hours of power cuts today. In lots of the provinces that make up most of the country,
00:51people are sometimes going without 20 hours per day. What we're seeing is Cuba trying to court
01:00Russia because they need the oil, they need the petrol. Within that context, there's actually
01:07been quite a bit of fanfare around this within Cuba. I got a press release this morning from
01:13the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, and they announced that the three warships and the one
01:22submarine come into Havana Bay. There's going to be a 21-gun salute. It's all quite showy.
01:27They're going to be putting on a bit of razzle-dazzle. I think what Cuban politicians are
01:34trying to communicate to their populace is that Cuba's not completely alone at this time, that
01:40the regime has international allies. I think what they're trying to telegraph and communicate to
01:46the United States implicitly is that if they get hit even harder with the sanctions, the sanctions
01:54have been ratcheted up to unprecedented heights since the Trump administration. The Biden
01:58administration has kept most of them in place, that they'll get closer to Russia. That is not
02:04something that U.S. policymakers, particularly in the Democratic Party, but many within the
02:07Republican Party, want. Cuba wants to ratchet up and telegraph its nuisance value that it's
02:14historically been very good at doing.