When Russia annexed Crimea this week, few looked to South America for Russian support. Yet Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and Argentinian President Cristina Fernández were lauding the conquest. Their support is no surprise: Putin has been cultivating it for years, reaping the rewards as the continent falls in line with the Kremlin.
The Russian Federation has never broken the ties the Soviet Union
cemented with the continent's most repressive Spanish-speaking nation,
Cuba. Few expected anything less from state propaganda outlet Granma than a full-throated support of Russia's colonization of Crimea, and their attack on "Ukrainian ultranationalists"
delivered. The nations of South America presented Putin with a much
more difficult relationship-building exercise, but one that he has taken
to with zeal.
While the United States has maintained close ties with Colombia and Chile, helping the former end a guerrilla warfare crisis
perpetrated by left-wing leaders in the nation, the generation of
leaders calling themselves Bolivarian socialists in Bolivia, Ecuador,
Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, and, to a lesser extent, Peru have all
expanded their ties with Russia.
Argentina's Fernández had close ties to Venezuelan leader Hugo
Chávez, who coined the term "Bolivarian socialist" in honor of founding
father Simón Bolívar--so close that the leader visited Chávez in the Cuban hospital he stayed in shortly before his death
and prayed with him. An openly leftist leader, Fernández found her
country courted by the Russian government under President Dmitry
Medvedev. In 2010, Medvedev visited Russia and agreed to invest in
Argentina's nuclear program, currently in existence but never having quite gotten off the ground. On Fernández's subsequent trip to Russia, the Russian premier gifted her a traditional hat, expressing the desire to "multiply ten or fifteen times" relations with Argentina. While the "several billion dollar" nuclear project never fully materialized, the diplomatic relationship continued as Argentina extended an offer for Russia to invest in its fuel projects.
Russia has also supported
the annexation of the Falkland Islands to Argentina, which became the
focal point of Fernández's argument in favor of the annexation of
Crimea. The Falklands, an island archipelago off the coast of Argentina
boasting a modest population of 2,000 humans and 500,000 sheep,
has long belonged to the United Kingdom, is an English-speaking region,
and is ethnically British. Despite the obvious desire to remain a part
of the United Kingdom, Argentina has repeatedly insisted that the
islands are rightfully its own, invading them in 1983 to laughable military results.
On Wednesday, Fernández returned the favor.
Crimea "has always belonged to Russia," she said in a statement, just
as the Falkland Islands have "always belonged to Argentina."
Russia's relations with other leftist South American nations have
taken a similar turn. In Ecuador, where President Rafael Correa's brutal repression of the press rivals even Maduro's, Russia has found a friend. Correa made his first visit to Moscow in 2009 when the two countries agreed to a series of deals that would arm Ecuador with higher-grade military equipment in exchange for open trade.
Relations with Putin are as strong as they were with Medvedev, and after some turbulent years in which Ecuador agreed to house Russian ally Julian Assange in their UK embassy and threatened to do the same with Edward Snowden, Correa made his second trip to Moscow. For his trouble, he received a $1.5 billion energy investment and two honorary degrees.
"I am very happy and marveled by this great nation," Correa said in a
statement in Moscow. "Thank you for all you have done in arts,
sciences, and global thinking." He did not mention the billions invested
in his country.
Putin, on his end, made clear that he considers Ecuador a valuable
ally. "Ecuador is one of our strategic partners in Latin America," Putin
said, according to the Ecuadorian state government, adding that the partnership was "fruitful."
Other nations on the continent have found themselves in similar
situations: public support for Russia has lead Russia to invest billions
in their economy. Brazil, the largest economy on the continent and a
country increasingly disgruntled with President Obama's spying initiatives,
is turning to Russia. They are not doing so for trade; they are doing
so for defense. Last October--as Correa was visiting Moscow--Brazil signed an agreement
with Russia that would give it $1 billion worth of missile defense
technology, after buying tanks and assorted artillery from the country
the year before. Peru, also looking to strengthen its defense, bought several military helicopters from Russia this January, long after President Ollanta Humala expressed interest in establishing a free trade deal with the nation.
Smaller countries like Bolivia have also strengthened ties with Russia. Speaking with--who else?--Russia Today last July,
President Evo Morales expressed interest in having Russia invest in his
country, as well. Less than a month later, Russia's petroleum
corporation, Gazprom, invested $130 million in the country.
Russia's vast fuel industry gives it the upper hand with most
countries in Latin America, except the one OPEC member nation on the
continent: Venezuela. With Venezuela, Putin has offered both other
services, like arms development, and the opposite service: finding
buyers to keep the inexcusably devastated Venezuelan economy afloat. Venezuela's ties to Russia go as far back as 2001, when Hugo Chávez made his first trip there as premier. By 2006, Russia was building arms factories in Venezuela to combat the U.S. embargo on selling weapons to the country.
A decade later, a year into the Maduro regime, Putin remains an ally
of the oppressive nation that is currently under scrutiny for its
systematic arrest, murder, and torture of unarmed protesters. Earlier this month, Putin expressed support for Maduro, and the Venezuelan leader expressed thanks on Twitter without
specifying just how big of a financial deal the countries had made. The
deal would allow Maduro to expand the sales of his country's oil,
however, which strengthens the power of his regime.
And so Maduro--like Fernández--has been vocal in supporting the recolonization of Crimea:
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