Nor do I.....
Since the article mentions Honduras and I have a family member from there who still has family there, I can't see what that country has to offer the Russians (other than fruits and vegetables) that they would want to butt heads with the drug cartels that now control the country.
As long as they aren’t spreading communism I really don’t care.
Nor do I.....
Since the article mentions Honduras and I have a family member from there who still has family there, I can’t see what that country has to offer the Russians (other than fruits and vegetables) that they would want to butt heads with the drug cartels that now control the country.
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Russia has been in the Caribbean and Central America for decades. WSJ is just now discovering it?
News media in Honduras are far less censored than in the US, so it’s fairly easy to see why and how Central Americans see Russia a little differently than those in the US. It’s like comparing the two through the same unfiltered light.
Honduras is much less drug-controlled now than it was a decade ago. Most of the big traffickers have either been extradited to the US or are rotting in El Pozo. Drug routes have moved mostly to the west through El Salvador and Guatemala, or by sea routes to the west coast of Mexico. There is still a lot of traffic in the Caribbean, but the Mosquitia routes are becoming less important.
Russia has several bases and “places of interest” in Nicaragua, but so far they have taken no active side in the ongoing conflict against Ortega. If the government is shooting people with Russian rifles it’s because they’ve bought thousands of them over the years. Same as Honduras shooting people with M16s or Israeli TARs.
Nicaragua was really not a bad country to visit up until a few months ago. My wife and I have crossed the border a few times to have a beer in Ocotal, but I wouldn’t go there now. Our cousin runs a distribution truck for a pharmaceutical company, and was detained by rebels south of Ocotal recently. They held him for a few days, but treated him kindly with food and shelter until the let him go. Northern Nicaragua from Las Manos to Managua is a war zone now, not the placid place it was when I last visited. But it is not due to Russian interference.
Most violence here is due to drugs in one way or other. Organized crime groups killing each other over “rights” to the lucrative US market. If dope use suddenly stopped in the US, much of Latin America would be more prosperous and secure.
Honduras has something the Russians want, or at least want to monitor as close as possible. That is Soto Cano Air Force Base, a US facility outside Comayagua. It is fairly common knowledge that Soto Cano is one of, if not THE, largest SIGINT and intelligence-gathering and relaying installations in Latin America.
People in the US have a knee-jerk reaction when they hear news about Central or South America. All those countries are collectively thought of as merely another “sh*thole” backwater non-entity, not worth considering until the dope supply stops.
The Russians don’t butt heads with the cartels, they work with them.
Let’s face it, Russians like Putin prefer scum because it is profitable to be worldly.
So do Democrats.