Cuban crisis 2.0? Russian nuclear sub to dock in Cuba after USA's Ukraine misadventure

A Russian nuclear-powered submarine will visit Havana next week, Cuba's communist authorities said on Thursday (Jun 6). The sub will not be carrying nuclear weapons, but the move has reminded the world of the infamous 1962 Cuban missile crisis.

Cuba's Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces said in a statement that the nuclear submarine Kazan and three other Russian naval vessels, including the missile frigate Admiral Gorshkov, an oil tanker and a salvage tug, will dock in the Cuban capital from June 12-17.

"None of the vessels is carrying nuclear weapons, so their stopover in our country does not represent a threat to the region," the ministry said.

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Despite the ministry's clarification that the vessels will not carry nuclear weapons, the unusual deployment has alarmed the West, especially the United States as the Russian military is going to be so close to America. Although, so far, there's no official comment from the US.

The deployment has been announced amid tensions between Moscow and the West over the war in Ukraine, with Russian President Vladimir Putin recently unleashing a slew of new nuclear threats.

Putin responded to the decision by the US and its European allies to allow Ukraine to attack some Russian territory using their weapons, especially long-range missiles.

The Russian president suggested he could provide arms to countries to hit Western targets as herevives nuclear threat once again.

Last month, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel met with his Russian counterpart for the annual May 9 military parade on Red Square outside the Kremlin. Both nations have come closer since a 2022 meeting between Diaz-Canel and Putin.

Do we know about the 1962 Cuban missile crisis?

The Cuban missile crisis was a major confrontation between the US and the then-Soviet Union that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.

The crisis erupted in 1962, which lasted over a month, when the Soviet Union responded to a US missile deployment in Turkey by sending ballistic missiles to Cuba. Then, the Soviet Union, formerly Russia, also included Ukraine.

In 1960, the former premier of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev promised to defend Cuba with Soviet arms, assuming that the US would not prevent the installation of medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Cuba.

The incident escalated to a level when the world feared a catastrophic nuclear attack. And if launched from Cuba, such missiles could reportedly hit much of the eastern US within a few minutes.

Watch:Russia accuses Kyiv of using USATACMS missiles to hit civilian targets in Luhansk

Claims and counterclaims continued until then US President John F Kennedy intervened. He was busy with the elections, but when he learned about the installations, he consulted security advisors. He even received suggestions that the US should launch an air strike.

But he decided to place a naval "quarantine," or blockade, on Cuba to prevent further Soviet shipments of missiles. He issued a warning that US forces would seize "offensive weapons and associated material" if Soviet vessels tried to deliver them to Cuba.

The crisis was eventually averted, Soviet ships altered their course and moved away from the quarantined zone, with Khrushchev later in the year informing Kennedy that the missiles already in Cuba would be returned to the Soviet Union and work on the missile sites would be halted.

Some reports have even mentioned that Kennedy had secretly promised to withdraw the nuclear-armed missiles from Turkey and that he committed the US would never invade Cuba.

(With inputs from agencies)