Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Agencie France Presse:

Russia on Thursday moved to revive ties with one of Moscow’s top Cold War allies, hosting President Raul Castro on the first visit by a Cuban leader since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

President Dmitry Medvedev welcomed Castro at the Zavidovo hunting lodge outside Moscow where Soviet leaders once entertained their closest foreign allies and even took him on a traditional winter picnic in the snow.

During the week-long visit, the two sides will seek to expand relations set back by the fall of the Soviet Union but which have improved in recent years as Russia seeks to align itself closer with anti-US states in Latin America.

The choice of the hunting lodge northwest of Moscow for the first talks of the week-long visit was rich in symbolism.

Raul Castro’s brother — Cuba’s revolutionary founder Fidel Castro — held talks here with then Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in the 1960s. Raul Castro made several Soviet-era visits to Moscow between 1960 and 1984.

“I am very glad to see you not only in Russia but in this forest location where you have been once before,” Medvedev told his guest.

“It was a long time ago and we are very glad that your visit after practically 25 years is taking place and I hope it will bring all the necessary results.”

Playing up the brotherly ties, Raul Castro said he had really missed the Russian forest and recalled the penchant of his Russian hosts for the traditional delicacy of salo — pure pig fat.

“I recalled with nostalgia the moment when we roasted salo in the forest and you wanted to eat it with black bread. I did not know if I would eat salo with black bread this time, but here I am.”

“There is nothing to discuss here. We will of course eat salo with black bread,” laughed Medvedev.

Castro, who took over as president from the ailing Fidel in 2006, had said his visit would expand relations with Russia, healing a rift that emerged with the Soviet Union’s collapse and the end of Soviet subsidies to Havana.

“We, like many others, see Russia’s rebirth as a positive factor,” Castro, 77, told the Russian news agency ITAR-TASS.

The Cuban ambassador to Moscow, Juan Valdes Figueroa, described the visit as “historic” and said the encounter with Medvedev would be a “meeting between two brothers,” the Kommersant daily reported.

As in Soviet times, an excursion of hunting in heavy winter snow was said to be planned at Zavidovo, while the pair enjoyed a traditional winter picnic over an open fire.

A visit to the lodge is a rare honour for a foreign dignitary in post-Soviet Russia.

The Russian government daily Rossiskaya Gazeta even dredged up an archival document showing that Raul Castro had expressed a preference for Russian vodka over Cuban rum on one of his Soviet-era visits.

Fidel Castro last paid an official visit to Russia in 1977, according to a Kremlin official. He also visited the country in 1987 for celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the October Revolution, according to the Latin America Institute in Moscow.

Raul Castro’s visit is to last until February 4, its length alone an indication of its importance. Formal discussions between the two delegations are to take place Friday at the Kremlin.

Relations already took a turn for the better last November when Medvedev visited Havana on a Latin American tour aimed at restoring what he called “privileged” Soviet-era relations with the region.

In December a group of Russian warships visited Havana on a tour seen as a deliberate attempt to challenge US dominance in Latin America, although US officials have remained sanguine about such Russian manoeuvres.

On Raul Castro’s current visit the focus will be business deals that include plans for a Russian consortium to explore oil fields off Cuba’s coast in the Gulf of Mexico and joint projects in nickel production on the island.