Russia Said US Should Not Worry About Lethal Warships Off of Cuba

“This is normal practice for all countries, including a large maritime nation like Russia,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. Reuters“So I don’t think there’s any need to worry about this.”

Russia insists it will not harm Cuban ships, even though they are some of the Kremlin’s most dangerous military assets.

For one thing, the Kazan submarine currently in Havana’s waters is a member of the new Severodvinsk-class submarines, which have long plagued the U.S. and NATO because they are difficult to detect and offer a dangerous combination of stealth and offensive power.

Also docked in Cuba is the Russian frigate Admiral Gorshkov, fully equipped with Putin’s prized Zircon scramjet-powered hypersonic cruise missiles, weapons that the Kremlin claims are invincible and are relatively new to Moscow’s arsenal.

Meanwhile, the Cuban Foreign Ministry echoed Russia’s sentiment, saying the ships posed no threat, Reuters reported.

Defence Ministry spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said at a press conference on Tuesday that the ministry was monitoring the situation but did not expect any threat from the warships.

“Again, the key takeaway here is that what Russia is doing with these exercises does not pose a threat to the United States, but of course we will continue to monitor,” she said.

The arrival of the ships is widely seen as a facade to make up for heavy losses suffered by Russia in the Black Sea.

Ukraine said in April it had used drones, missiles and other weapons to destroy a number of Russian warships.

U.S. officials may say there is no imminent threat, but shortly after the Russian Kazan submarine appeared, the U.S. attack submarine Helena, Los Angeles-class, sailed from the Russian vessel to Guantanamo Bay on Thursday, about 500 miles away.

The US Southern Command statement The submarine was there on Thursday as part of a routine port visit, it said.

Representatives for US Southern Command and the Russian Ministry of Defense did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s requests for comment sent outside of regular business hours.