Deciphering Ukraine-Cuba relations

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/03/2022 (1013 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

IN early March, the besieged government of Volodymyr Zelenskyy criticized Cuba’s failure to take a tough line on Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine. Through a formal diplomatic protest, Kyiv expressed “its strong protest against the statements of the Government of Cuba in support of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.”

Although the Cuban government has called for a rigorous diplomatic solution to the crisis in eastern Europe, it has not censured the horrific actions of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. But neither has Havana openly sided with Moscow and offered its unflinching backing of the illegal Russian invasion.

In fact, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, against what many had actually predicted, abstained on a crucial March 2 vote on a UN General Assembly resolution condemning Russia’s deadly attack on Ukraine.

Indeed, there is now evidence the Kremlin deliberately targeted the Zaporizhzhia nuclear reactor complex, Europe’s largest, in the Ukrainian city of Enerhodar. While there is no indication that any radioactive material has leaked out, the attack and seizure add to the already unprecedented military actions by Moscow.

All of this got me thinking about Ukraine-Cuba relations in the context of the April 1986 meltdown of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant — the world’s worst nuclear disaster. What most people don’t know, however, is that the Cuban government quickly stepped up to offer medical treatment to thousands of Ukrainian children afflicted with thyroid cancer and other illnesses (such as lymphoma) linked to radiation exposure.

As former president of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma once remarked candidly: “While many other countries, rich countries, have shown pity, Cuba has shown its solidarity, helping to increase health and save thousands of children and young Ukrainians.”

For contextual purposes, it is important to note that Cuba found itself in extraordinarily challenging times economically after the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. This, in fact, led to the so-called “Special Period in a Time of Peace” in Cuba, when there were shortages of everything, random electrical blackouts and the average Cuban lost about 20 pounds.

Still, Havana was not about to coldly turn away from Ukrainian children badly in need of medical care. So from March 1990 to December 2011, approximately 25,000 Ukrainians were treated in Cuba for various ailments. For a number of years, 2,000 children would arrive annually — along with a close family member or relative to comfort them during their stay.

Cuba’s humanitarian effort, or what was later dubbed the “Children of Chernobyl” program, was concentrated in the resort town of Tarará — roughly 19 kilometres east of Havana. Besides a school, two sports fields and a long stretch of sandy beach, Tarará had a movie theatre and a cultural centre. Most importantly, there was a 350-bed hospital, staffed with some 50 Cuban doctors and 80 nurses, to treat the cancer-stricken Ukrainian children.

It is worth highlighting that the Cuban government covered all the costs for their medical treatment, food and accommodation and any other extracurricular activities. These patients (or the Ukrainian government) were, however, responsible to pay for their transportation costs to the island. But the Cubans even took care of the accommodation expenses for the accompanying family member.

It is difficult to say with any precision what the full cost to Cuba was for treating 25,000-plus cancer patients over those two decades. But we are probably talking about billions here, and not hundreds of millions of dollars. In fact, one Ukrainian NGO, the International Fund for Chernobyl, pegged the drug costs alone for patients at roughly $350 million in 2010.

As far as I know, the Cuban government never asked for anything substantive in return.

Interestingly, then-Cuban president Fidel Castro took a personal interest in the fate of the Chernobyl children and visited Tarará many times. In early 1990, just after the sick Ukrainian children started arriving, Castro was adamant: “They are going to have the best doctors, the best medical care, the best hospitals, the best medicines that exist in the world. This co-operation of ours is a very basic duty.”

He would also frequently check in with the medical staff at the Tarará hospital to get an update on how the Ukrainian children were progressing.

At this stage, however, it’s hard to predict exactly where Ukrainian-Cuba relations will go from here. There were some encouraging signs recently from Ukraine’s chief of mission in Havana, Oleksandr Kalinchuk, who said that he was in favour of engaging with Cuban officials on the current situation in Ukraine.

One would hope, given what transpired during that 21-year period when Cuba provided much-needed heath care to deathly sick Ukrainian children, that the two countries can find some common diplomatic ground going forward.

Peter McKenna is professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown.