The head of Cuba’s armed forces recently traveled to Syria, according to a Miami-based research group that claims a cadre of defense officials from the communist island have been dispatched to join Russia’s growing military operations in support of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
In a memo circulated to reporters this week, the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami said it had received inside information that Havana was sending the defense officials to operate sophisticated Russian tanks that Moscow has been providing to the Syrian military.
The visit comes as the Obama administration is pushing forward with a rapprochement after a half-century of hostility between Havana and Washington.
Cuban military chief Gen. Leopoldo Cintra Frias personally visited Syria as part of the deployment, according to the report, which provided few other details.
One source said the Cintra Frias trip was plausible — given the Cuban government’s long history with Moscow and its support for the Assad regime — and that a small number of Cuban military personnel may be on the ground in Syria, but that anything beyond that was “wild speculation.”
Fox News reported that a U.S. official had anonymously confirmed that Cuban paramilitary and special forces units are on the ground in Syria and said the units may have been training in Russia and may have arrived in Syria on Russian planes.
