World
Russian warships in Cuba: Is it a port of call or show of strength?
On Wednesday, dozens of Havana residents gathered and watched as Russian warships sailed into Cuba’s main harbour – in the latest display of naval strength by Moscow amid heightened tensions with the United States.
The Caribbean nation is a neighbour of the US, which at its closest point, is just about 150 kilometres (94 miles) away, but have had tense relations for decades.
While it is not the first time Russian navy ships have visited Cuba, this convoy appears to be the largest in several years. The fleet is expected to stay between June 12 and 17 and the public will be allowed to take tours of the vessels.
Here’s what we know about why Russia has sent ships to Cuba now, how far back Russian-Cuban ties go, and why the two have gotten closer in the past year:
Why are the warships in Havana?
The flotilla is part of a “friendly” routine visit between the two countries’ navies, Cuban officials have said. The crew on board are expected to conduct military training exercises during their time in the Caribbean.
But analysts have said Moscow’s move is largely calculated to flex naval muscle in the US’s back yard. The detachment comes after escalating tensions between Russia and the US, following President Joe Biden’s decision in May to allow Ukraine to attack Russian targets with American weapons.
Russian President Putin has promised retaliation against not only the US, but also other Western allies of Ukraine who also removed restrictions on using their weapons against Moscow.
“That would mark their direct involvement in the war against the Russian Federation, and we reserve the right to act the same way,” Putin said last week, adding that Moscow was ready to use nuclear weapons.
Benjamin Gedan, director of the Latin America programme at the Washington, DC-based Wilson Center think tank, told The Associated Press news agency that “the warships are a reminder to Washington that it is unpleasant when an adversary meddles in your [neighbourhood].”
The naval show-off is also meant to reassure Moscow’s Latin American allies – Cuba and Venezuela, of its continued support for them against Washington, some experts said.
Like Russia and Cuba, economically ravaged Venezuela has unpleasant relations with the US and is under American sanctions.
What ships did Russia deploy and how much of a threat are they?
The Russian fleet includes four vehicles in total.
- Admiral Gorshkov: is the lead ship in the convoy. The frigate – that is, a warship that is light to steer and can be easily manoeuvred – is one of the Russian navy’s most modern models. It is capable of carrying out long-range missile attacks and anti-submarine warfare while being difficult to spot with radars because of the use of stealth technology. The ship is equipped with Zircon hypersonic missiles, which Putin has in the past said can fly nine times faster than the speed of sound at a range of more than 1,000km (more than 620 miles). It also carries Kalibr and Oniks cruise missiles.
- Kazan: is a nuclear-powered submarine and houses a nuclear reactor. The vehicle is also believed to be equipped with missiles from the Kalibr and Oniks families.
- Pashin – the fleet’s oil tanker, and a rescue tugboat – Nikolai Chiker – complete the convoy as support vehicles.
How has the US responded?
US officials are publicly downplaying the deployment, and say it is part of usual port-calls between Russia and Cuba.
White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on Wednesday that such naval exercises were routine and that there were no signs Moscow was transferring missiles to Havana.
Last July, Perekop – a Russian training ship equipped with anti-aircraft guns and a rocket launcher – was on a four-day visit to Havana and conducted “a range of activities” according to Cuban officials. The Admiral itself visited in 2019.
“We have seen this kind of thing before, and we expect to see this kind of thing again, and I’m not going to read into it any particular motives,” Sullivan said, adding that the US would remain vigilant.
The US deployed ships and planes that monitored the movement of the fleet even before it arrived in Cuba and assessed there were no nuclear weapons on board, officials speaking to US media said, noting that the fleet stayed in international waters throughout.
What are Cuba and Russia saying?
Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Tuesday that the fleet had conducted drills in the Atlantic while on the way to Cuba.
The Russian crew practised using high-precision missile weapons with the aid of computer-simulated enemy ship targets located at a distance of more than 600km (more than 320 nautical miles), according to the ministry.
Meanwhile, the Cuban Foreign Ministry, before the fleet’s arrival, stressed that none of the warships would carry nuclear weapons and added that their presence “does not represent a threat to the region”.
“Visits by naval units from other countries are a historical practice of the revolutionary government with nations that maintain relations of friendship and collaboration,” the ministry said in a statement.
Is this a replay of 1962?
Both Russia and Cuba have long been united in their opposition to the US. During the Cold War, their ties deepened intensely, as the then-Soviet Union befriended the ideologically aligned Havana. Moscow provided financial aid, military equipment, and naval training, boosting the country’s military might in the Caribbean.
Things came to a head in 1962 when Moscow transferred nuclear weapons to Cuba, prompting a response from the US, which imposed a naval blockade on Havana in response. That tense episode is now known as the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
The fall of the Soviet Union saw Cuba lose a major economic partner and fall into economic depression. But in recent years, the countries’ cooperation has again deepened.
Analysts have said this week’s naval show-off marked that intensifying relationship, but noted that it does not necessarily mean a rehash of events in 1962. Rather, Cuba, in particular, is again drawn to Russia for economic reasons, rather than ideology.
How have their economic ties deepened in the past year?
In the longest-lasting trade sanctions in modern history, the US has since 1958 banned American entities from trading with Cuba – following Fidel Castro’s overthrow of a US-backed government in Havana.
Although the sanctions have been eased at different times, they have largely remained over the years. In 2015, US President Barack Obama decided to restore diplomatic ties with Cuba after 50 years, but his successor Donald Trump reversed course nearly four years later.
That has partly contributed to a continuing economic crisis in the Caribbean country – alongside shaky government economic policies – analysts said.
“The blockade qualifies as a crime of genocide,” Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla said at a UN General Assembly meeting in November, referring to the US sanctions.
Deteriorating public services, regular power cuts, food and fuel shortages, and high inflation have pushed Cuba into its worst economic crisis in decades.
In recent years, Cuba has again turned to Russia, aiming to draw foreign investors. The two countries, last May, kicked off a series of economic partnerships, including one that will allow Russian businesses to lease Cuban land for 30 years – an unusual move in the largely closed-off country.
Bilateral trade between Cuba and Russia reached $450m in 2022, three times that of 2021, Russian officials said. About 90 percent of the trade comprised sales of petroleum products and soy oil, as Russia pumps in badly needed fuel to the country.
Ricardo Cabrisas, Cuba’s former minister of foreign commerce, told reporters on the sidelines of a business forum hosting Russian investors in Havana last May that the economic ties between Russia and Cuba would only grow stronger.
“Nothing and no one can stop it,” Cabrisas said.
A magnitude 7.1 earthquake shook north-central Venezuela on Wednesday afternoon, near capital Caracas, with residents in neighboring Colombia also reporting feeling tremors.
Residents in Caracas rushed to evacuate as the quake shook buildings. One witness said that cracks had formed up the side of their apartment and glass in the entryway had shattered.
The U.S. Tsunami Warning System issued a tsunami threat for Puerto Rico and the U.S. and British Virgin Islands following the earthquake, adding that islands off the coast of Venezuela – Aruba, Curacao and Bonaire – could also be hit by hazardous waves.
(Reporting by Reuters staff; Editing by Chris Reese and Daina Beth Solomon)
World
Israel slams UN report as ‘political blood libel’ for alleging deliberate targeting of Palestinian children
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Israel reacted angrily over a new United Nations’ Commission of Inquiry report alleging the Jewish state had engaged in the “deliberate targeting of Palestinian children.”
Prior reports from the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Including East Jerusalem, and Israel garnered accusations of antisemitism and incitement to violence.
The latest report, released Wednesday, said that, “based on the evidence reviewed, and consistent with its previous reports, the Commission finds on reasonable grounds that the Israeli authorities and the Israeli security forces have continued to commit the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Gaza Strip and war crimes in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.”
UN EXPERT REPEATS ISRAEL ‘GENOCIDE’ CLAIMS AFTER US CALLS FOR HER REMOVAL
A woman kneels by a memorial site in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, southern Israel, as the community commemorates members killed, taken hostage, or who died in captivity following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. (Hannah McKay/Reuters)
Israel’s Ambassador to the U.N., Danny Danon, told Fox News Digital that “this is not an investigative report. It is a political blood libel disguised as a U.N. document. This commission reaches its conclusions before examining the facts and repeatedly publishes reports that serve one purpose only: to vilify Israel. Instead of addressing Hamas’ crimes, the October 7 massacre, the hostages, and Hamas’ cynical use of children and civilians as human shields, the commission has once again chosen to place Israel in the dock.”
Danon added that “Israel will continue to defend its citizens and fight terrorism, regardless of how many false reports are published by fringe actors within U.N. institutions.”
Representatives from the COI and Human Rights Council did not respond to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment on the concerns addressed about the report.
Asked for a reaction from U.N. chief Antonio Guterres to the report, his spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, told Fox News Digital “it’s not his report to comment on.”
ISRAELI AMBASSADOR LASHES OUT AT UN OFFICIAL, CONDEMNS UK, FRANCE, CANADA STATEMENT ON AID
A bloodied handprint stains a wall inside a house in the Nir Oz kibbutz near the Gaza border after a Hamas attack days earlier. (Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images)
Srinivasan Muralidhar, Chair of the Commission told reporters during a press briefing that, “The evidence shows that Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by the Israeli security forces.” He said “Even after the October 2025 ceasefire, children continue to be killed and seriously injured, with continued disregard by Israel for the ceasefire and for the protection owed to Palestinian children under international law.”
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Anne Bayefsky, President of Human Rights Voices and Director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, told Fox News Digital that the COI’s “sham ‘inquiry’ makes the totally unjustified claim of legal authority, while at the same time systematically violating every conceivable legal rule of fairness, impartiality, and due process. Since its creation in 2021, every call for submissions, every consultation and every hearing held, has been contrived to take seriously the allegations of only one side – trashing literally millions of data points both historical and current to the contrary.”
She said, “the first COI report focused on children…fails to even mention the sickening murders of 9-month-old Kfir Bibas and 4-year-old Ariel Bibas.” She says that “also ignored in the COI report are the hundreds of thousands of Israeli children traumatized by October 7th, by the subsequent mass displacement, and by the excruciating longing for parents absent while defending their country against an inhumane foe.”
Photos of the Bibas family and Oded Lifshitz, 84, who were kidnapped during the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack and later killed, are displayed next to candles in the dining room in Kibbutz Nir Oz, Israel, on Feb. 25, 2025, the day of Lifshitz’s funeral after their bodies were returned under a ceasefire agreement. (Amir Cohen/Reuters)
NETANYAHU SHOWS PICTURE OF BIBAS FAMILY AT COMBAT OFFICERS’ GRADUATION: ‘REMEMBER WHAT WE ARE FIGHTING FOR’
Bayefsky complained that though the current COI report “was produced weeks ago,” the COI members “deliberately withheld” the report when appearing before the Human Rights Council last week. “They didn’t publish it until June 23, minutes prior to holding a stage-managed press conference designed to avoid accountability for their wild, unverified accusations,” she claimed.
Another member of the commission told reporters in Geneva that, “There can be no doubt in anyone who reads today’s report that every international legal norm has been violated by the actions of the Israeli authorities towards Palestinian children and they need to be held accountable.”
United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres speaks during a Security Council meeting at the United Nations headquarters in New York on April 18, 2024. (Yuki Iwamura/AP)
Jonathan Conricus, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and former Israel Defense Forces spokesperson, told Fox News Digital that the latest report contains “no evidence to support any of the claims against Israel” and is filled with “inconsistencies in methodology.”
He said the report represents “an escalation, and it marks maybe the most severe attempt by the U.N. ecosystem to delegitimize Israel.”
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Salo Aizenberg, director of media watchdog group HonestReporting, who has researched and debunked many of the claims made by those claiming genocide in Gaza, told Fox News Digital that the COI’s “report is built on a fictional battlefield where Hamas and [Palestinian Islamic Jihad] do not exist, and where hospitals are treated as purely civilian spaces despite extensive evidence of their military use and infiltration by Hamas operatives. It then accuses Israel of deliberately targeting children without producing a single incident supported by evidence of intent.”
Conricus said the report erases “Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad from the battlefield to create the false kind of perception that Israel was operating out of wanton aggression in a vacuum without there ever being a need for Israeli operations and this is a reoccurring theme.” He also noted that this report and others “use the statements of medical professionals as evidence, even when it’s way beyond their medical expertise, specifically when it comes to how wounds were inflicted.”
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Europe is breaking heat records. These extreme events pose a threat to people’s health both at home and at work. The European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), a research centre affiliated with the European Trade Union Confederation, presented a report on Thursday laying out solutions aimed at safeguarding workers’ health in the face of climate change.
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One of the report’s authors emphasised that the danger is not limited to the south of the continent.
“The problem is the worst in the south, of course; that’s where we see most of the accidents. At the same time, though, we have been recording the highest increases in accidents in central and northern Europe,” said Andreas Flouris, professor of physiology at the University of Thessaly.
“The south is already hot, and it’s a problem. But the centre and the north are catching up very fast.”
According to the report, around 130 million workers across Europe are exposed to workplace heat stress, resulting in 277,000 related injuries and 230 deaths annually.
An EU-OSHA (European Agency for Safety and Health at Work) survey from 2025 found that around one in five workers in the EU reported exposure to extreme heat at work in the previous 12 months. Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of these heatwaves, which affect health and reduce work capacity.
“The optimum temperature to work at is 16°C. Beyond that, for every 1°C rise, there is an average productivity loss of around 2%,” Flouris told Euronews.
“During an average heatwave in southern Europe, productivity losses reach around 20 to 25%. In central Europe, the figure is between 8 and 14%, and even in Scandinavia, we have recorded losses of 3 to 6% due to heatwaves over the course of a year,” he added.
Based on scientific evidence, the report’s authors propose that the European Union introduce legislation specifically targeting heat risks in the workplace.
“What we propose is a mandatory heat risk assessment, in order to oblige employers to assess and identify the risks related to heat exposure in their workplace. Only by knowing what we are dealing with can we protect workers and prevent the risks associated with heat exposure at work,” said Marouane Laabbas-el-Guennouni, a researcher at the European Trade Union Institute.
The report also proposes using a broader index to assess heat stress exposure. The authors argue that temperature should not be the sole indicator, and that humidity and wind speed should also be factored in when determining exposure levels.
The researchers emphasised that heatwaves are a measurable, predictable, and therefore preventable phenomenon.
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