Why is the Nicaraguan government interested in cooperation with foreign troops?

As of July 1, foreign troops, including Russian ones, already have the green light to enter Nicaragua after last month the National Assembly approved the exchange of ships, aircraft, and military personnel for “mutually beneficial purposes of exchange and humanitarian assistance.”

At the moment it is unknown if the mission that would conclude its exercises on December 31 of this year arrived in the country, but if there is something that is clear, it is that said decision has generated concern in the region, as stated by the president of Costa Rica, Rodrigo Chaves.

Separate analysts agree that, although it is a common practice that Nicaragua carries out periodically, in the case of Russian troops, it is not appropriate in the current context, marked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Apart from that, experts question, for example: Why is Nicaragua currently seeking support from the Russian Army? And what has been the Kremlin’s support for Managua?

Evan Ellis, a professor of Latin American studies at the United States Army War College, tells the voice of america that Nicaragua has one of the strongest relations with Russia in Latin America and that goes back to the days when Daniel Ortega came to power in 1979 as the leader of the Sandinista revolution and at that time, after Cuba, Ortega prevailed as another key player in the Soviet advance in Latin America.

And after Ortega’s return to power in 2007, the president sought to renew this relationship at that time with the government of Dmitri Medvedev, president of Russia, to whom Ortega offered support by recognizing the republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia during the internal war in Georgia.

The expert says that after that Nicaragua lent itself in terms of sending threats from Russia to the United States in different periods.

“Although Nicaragua has not had as many resources as Venezuela to buy a quantity of Russian weapons, in a certain way, Nicaragua, due to its size, has been a key partner in terms of the acquisition of war material, including armored vehicles, war and the connection to the satellite-based communication system of which there is a station in Nicaragua,” Ellis said.

Similarly, the expert mentions that Russia supports Nicaragua in training police officers with the anti-drug agency and there are also a number of other goods and benefits, such as the delivery of grains and meals, and also buses.

“Although in terms of money it has not been as big as cooperation Venezuela, in terms of history and the level of cooperation on political issues, they have already been key partners for Russia in the region,” adds Ellis.

Nicaragua finds in Russia “a political shield”, says Crisis Group analyst

The sociologist and expert on security issues, Elvira Cuadras, considers that Russia has very little experience, at least in the fight against organized crime, because it is not familiar with and does not have much to do with the operations of these organized groups in Central America, so that the troops would not be able to support much of the Nicaraguan Army unlike the US Southern Command.

“The routes or organizations that have an impact on Russia do not leave this region. The US has said that it is rather related to military intelligence activities”, comments the expert.

For his part, the analyst of the Crisis Group, Tiziano Breda, separately considers that the basis of the relations between the Kremlin and Managua are more for a historical issue in which Ortega seeks in Russia a type of political protection “in a multipolar world.”

“Beyond some type of military cooperation, the relationship between these two countries has not gone beyond that, I feel that its function is not to have trade at its center, but rather a political shield at the international level,” values ​​Breda in an interview via Skype to the VOA.

In his opinion, the only relevant piece of information in the relations between these countries is the ground station of the Global Navigation Satellite System (Glonass, acronym in Russian) and “that some suppose that it has some type of espionage, not only at the state level, but regional, but beyond them we have not seen a significant increase in the physical presence of troops, military equipment, beyond some tanks, but still quite marginal.

Southern Command to Nicaragua and Venezuela: “We will continue to monitor them closely”

But despite the opinions of experts, the truth is that the United States is closely following the steps of Nicaragua and Venezuela, principal allies of the Kremlin in the region, as he told the voice of america the head of the US Southern Command, Laura Richardson, who indicated that they will be vigilant to “maintain stability” in the region.

“With these two countries we hope that they end up becoming democracies. I want to say that this is the hope that we have for the region and that they are a factor of stability, not something that creates instability. And that is what these two countries have done.”

Nicaragua, for its part, has minimized the arrival of Russian troops and has said that these are routine exercises, but on the other hand it has strengthened its relations with the Kremlin. In fact, in the midst of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, various Moscow officials, including the president of the Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, arrived in Managua to meet with Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega.

Volodin was previously received in the National Assembly, with a pro-government majority, where a special session was held and the official gave a speech in which he justified the Russian aggression against Ukraine and assured that “it was a peacekeeping operation” to, supposedly, avoid a war. on a large scale.

[Con reporte adicional de Antony Belchi]

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