United States: General Laura J. Richardson, who is in charge of Southern Command at the Pentagon, said on Thursday that the United States is in talks with nine Latin American countries to provide them with American weapons in exchange for donating their own stocks. Russian equipment to Ukraine.
Nine countries in Latin America "have Russian equipment," according to Richardson, who was speaking to the Atlantic Council, a think tank backed by NATO and funded by the US arms industry.
The Pentagon is "working to replace it with American equipment if those countries want to donate it to Ukraine," he said.
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According to Richardson, three of these countries—Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua—have close ties to Russia. However, he did not specify whether these countries would be included in any potential arms-swap talks or whether a potential agreement would only apply to the six nations that were more willing to work with the US.
While it forbids doing business with most of these organizations, the US actively opposes any policy that "benefits the Cuban government or its military, intelligence or security agencies." Washington also does not recognize the election of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega in 2021 as a "sham", just as it does not recognize Nicolás Maduro as the legitimate president of Venezuela.
The US has already agreed to sell more than 100 M1 Abrams tanks to Poland to replace several hundred Soviet-era tanks that Warsaw donated to Ukraine.
The Biden administration has moved US-made air defense systems to Slovakia, similar to the Soviet systems his government sent to Ukraine.
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The Pentagon has also pressured US arms producers to increase production of weapons from US military stocks being sent to Ukraine.
According to multiple reports, the unprecedented effort to arm Kyiv's military has nearly exhausted US stockpiles.
