No matter how many contrary statements made by Cuba’s communist regime, which are dutifully parroted by foreign media, it’s obvious the Castros are aiding Putin in his war against Ukraine. No amount of orchestrated investigations and claims of ignorance by the Castro dictatorship can cover the close relationship communist Cuba has with Russia’s dictator.
Jose Luis Reyes explains in Diario de Cuba:
Havana is involved in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and this is the evidence
‘Cuba is not part of the war in Ukraine,’ claims the MINREX, but events over the last year and a half show otherwise.
When Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, 2022, Cuban viewers who do not read Granma or Cubadebate, or watch the Noticiero Estelar (newscast) learned of the carnage being wrought in Europe when they tuned in to Tele Rebelde, “The sports channel in Cuba,” and noticed something strange during the broadcast of Spanish Soccer League (La Liga) matches.
While Barcelona or Real Madrid (the teams with the most fans on the island) were playing, in the top left corner the screen, next to the score, a dark band covered the message “No To The Invasion,” and the Ukrainian flag, which the original broadcast included in solidarity with the invaded country.
The official channel, controlled, like the rest of the media by the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), first covered up the message of protest with the channel’s name, and later with a black graphic, something that did not go unnoticed by people on the island.
Some viewers and social media users criticized the censorship, calling it “shameful.” “In addition to being pathetic, I imagine it’s illegal,” Rafa wrote on Twitter, while others condemned the Cuban sports commentators’ silence, as they ignored the players’ minutes of silence and other gestures in support of Kiev.
Cubans know that something like this is no coincidence. The PCC Central Committee’s Ideological Department, which oversees the official press, radio and television (the only legal ones in Cuba) decides the content of these media, especially with regard to international relations. This is why there one will never hear how about the people of North Korea really livem or that the dictator Daniel Ortega has prohibited NGOs and closed universities in Nicaragua.
In April of 2022, more than two months after the invasion began, Cubans realized that Kiev’s official news site, Ukrinform, one of the main sources of information about Ukraine, founded in 1918, was blocked on the island.
Ironically, weeks prior the regime’s Unión de Periodistas de Cuba (UPEC: Union of Cuban Journalists) called Europe’s decision to block the Russian state media sources Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik a “violation of sacred rights,” after they were accused of spreading disinformation about the war in Ukraine and subjected to western sanctions.
“It seems that the same UPEC, which threw a fit over the censorship of Russian media in Europe and the United States, didn’t hear about Cuba’s censorship of the main Ukrainian news agency. There is no solidarity by the UPEC with Ukraine and its media,” Cuban professor and political scientist Alexei Padilla Herrera stated on his Facebook wall.
Despite this, in a statement the UPEC claimed to uphold freedom of expression in the face of what it described as Washington’s “one-sided story.” In a text entitled “Disinformation is a crime against culture,” the regime’s journalism organization indicated that “disconnecting Russia from the world’s communication platforms, banning its news media, condemning journalists for not joining the Russophobia that has been unleashed, is, at the very least, a violation of consecrated rights.”
By then it was evident that something was wrong with the Cuban regime’s alleged logic: despite its supposed neutrality, after openly supporting the invasion, its propaganda apparatus then promoted Moscow’s narrative on the war, as it still does today.
Continue reading HERE.
Well, at least the Cuban SOB, albeit too fat for the military, is wearing a proper uniform and no baseball cap.