14 DAY TRIAL // As Itar-Tass news agency reports, Anatoly Perminov, chief of the Russian Federal Space Agency, visited Caracas in order to talk to Venezuelan and Cuban officials. Within the recent few months, Russia has made efforts to improve its relations with both of these countries, as none of them is on good terms with America.
These Russian efforts of tie-renewal with the Caribbeans are likely to remind Washington officials of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, when US and USSR almost declared war because of the proximity of Cuban Soviet missile bases to the American shores. But Russians insist that this has nothing to do with it, instead they just want to repair the fact that Cuba has been neglected after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Itar-Tass quoted Anatoly Perminov as saying, “We have held preliminary discussions about the possibility of creating a space center in Cuba with our help. With our Cuban colleagues, we discussed the possibilities of joint use of space equipment ... and the joint use of space communications systems.” Russia had been noted to help Cuba on this kind of space efforts before, as USSR invited Cuban Arnaldo Tamayo-Mendez as the first non-U.S. person to fly into space from the western hemisphere during their guest cosmonaut program in 1980, along with other “cosmonauts” from Romania, the former East Germany, Poland, Afghanistan, Mongolia and Vietnam.
The space-related ambitions of Cuban people raise many questions and doubts about their validity and reasons. Maybe, as it was noted, they are in need of a weather satellite in order to be better prepared for the hurricanes that blast their coasts on their way towards the US. But it is rather credible to assume that Cuba would just provide a better missile launch location for Russia, since it's near the Equator. But let's not be harsh and, before time tells on this event, let's welcome Cuba among the space pioneers instead.