Rep. Salazar: 'We must stop the Russians in our own backyard'

Republican Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar from Florida addressed the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday and warned that “Russia is moving violently in Ukraine but silently into Latin America.”

Since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the attack on Ukraine on Feb. 24, the eyes of the world have understandably been locked on Europe as Moscow and the West struggle to negotiate peace.

Yet lawmakers and experts alike have warned that the Kremlin is set on capitalizing on the “new socialist, authoritarian wave” that is currently spreading across Latin America.

“While the world was frozen by fear as Russia amassed an invading force around Ukraine, we sat on our hands and watched as the Russians deployed nearly 200,000 troops along their borders,” Salazar told her colleagues on the committee, adding that, “the same thing could be happening in our backyard.”

Referencing the Kremlin’s increasingly friendly relations with the dictatorships in Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba, the congresswoman warned that Russia has in recent years provided “lethal military equipment” to regimes unfriendly to the United States.

“Three years ago, Russia sent TU-60 nuclear bombers to Venezuela. Not only that, Vladimir Putin recently sold to Venezuela 24 SU-30 aircraft, the same planes currently terrorizing the Ukrainians -- part of an $11 billion deal in lethal military equipment to the Venezuelans."

Similarly, she warned that Russia’s state-owned oil company Rosneft had invested $10 billion dollars into revitalizing Venezuela’s ailing oil industry – and that the Biden administration was now considering buying the South American country’s “blood stained oil.”

Speaking on Cuba, Salazar warned that Russia’s top diplomat, Sergei Lavrov, said in January that his country was considering deploying up to 2,500 storm troopers to the communist island.

Furthermore, she noted that the Kremlin had hinted at initiating major infrastructure projects including air and seaport infrastructure for “dual purposes” and the restarting of a former KGB spy station called the Lourdes Listening Post.

“You know what that means, right? The Russian military is coming into Cuba again,” she said.

Salazar ended her remarks by reminding her colleagues that Russia’s previous involvement in Latin America almost led to nuclear war.  

"Talking about Cuba, this is what you get when you have a weak president. It doesn't matter if the year is 2022 or 1962, John F. Kennedy didn't know how to handle the Russians, he blinked during the Bay of Pigs operation, and that's how we got to the Cuban Missile Crisis,” she said.

“When you close your eyes, dictators strike. If you don't know that, just open your history books. I believe we need peace through strength; we must stop the Russians in our own backyard, and we shouldn't fall into the same trap otherwise history will make us pay."