A Quote by Daniel Ortega
Of course, the kind of support that Cuba could give us was very limited when it came to building up our army, since they didn't manufacture armaments in the quantities that we required. So we turned to Algeria and the Soviet Union for support.
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If you are asking did I support the Soviet Union, yes I did. Yes, I did support the Soviet Union, and I think the disappearance of the Soviet Union is the biggest catastrophe of my life.
The most important part of [Russian] support is the aerial support, which is very essential, they have very strong firepower, and at the same time they are the main supply of our army for more than sixty years, so our army depends on the Russian support in different military domains.
To give [the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba] even covert support is on a par with the hypocrisy and cynicism for which the United States is constantly denouncing the Soviet Union in the United Nations and elsewhere. This point will not be lost on the rest of the world, nor on our own consciences.
Why were the Europeans bothered about the Soviet Union at all? It was nothing to do with us. China had nothing to do with us. Why were we not building, without reference to the Soviet Union, a good society in our own countries? But no, we were all - in one way or another - obsessed with the bloody Soviet Union, which was a disaster. What people were supporting was failure. And continually justifying it.
Yes, I did support the Soviet Union, and I think the disappearance of the Soviet Union is the biggest catastrophe of my life.
Think about it: Iran, Cuba, Venezuela - these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don't pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us.
25 million of Russian people suddenly turned out to be outside the borders of the Russian Federation. They used to live in one state; the Soviet Union has traditionally been called Russia, the Soviet Russia, and it was the great Russia. Then the Soviet Union suddenly fell apart, in fact, overnight, and it turned out that in the former Soviet Union republics there were 25 million Russians. They used to live in one country and suddenly found themselves abroad. Can you imagine how many problems came out?
Strong countries and strong presidents talk to their adversaries. That's what Kennedy did with Khrushchev. That's what Reagan did with Gorbachev. That's what Nixon did with Mao. I mean think about it. Iran, Cuba, Venezuela - these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don't pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. And yet we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying we're going to wipe you off the planet.
Communism wasn't a word that I thought of when I went to Cuba. The original Fidelistas were not Communists. They were graduate students at the university and law students. After the Fidelistas took over, they went to Washington and tried to get support from the U.S. government, which turned them down. They were in a desperate political and economic situation, so they took the offer from the Soviet Union. Communism was a matter of necessity.
All the Baltic countries have been steadfast in support of allies of the United States since they gained their independence following the fall of the Soviet Union and have continued to be supportive in the ongoing war on terror.
The first year I was in office, only about 800 people came out of the Soviet Union, Jews. By the third year I was in office... second year, 1979, 51,000 came out of the Soviet Union. And every one of the human rights heroes - I'll use the word - who have come out of the Soviet Union, have said it was a turning point in their lives, and not only in the Soviet Union but also in places like Czechoslovakia and Hungary and Poland [they] saw this human rights policy of mine as being a great boost to the present democracy and freedom that they enjoy.
Many of us have created lives that give very little support for experimentation. We believe that answers already exist out there, independent of us. What if we invested more time and attention to our own experimentation? We could focus our efforts on discovering solutions that work uniquely for us.
We didn't have that big-label push. We weren't the kind of band that our label Warner Bros. Records was going to throw all this money at. Their idea was to support us on the road and see what happens. It was a very slow building process.
Growing up, I didn't know very much about my heritage and the Soviet Union and things of that nature. But when I saw the Soviet Union play hockey for the first time, to me, it was profound.
My nation faces a fundamental challenge - survival. The regime is more threatened than ever before. My forefathers had it easy. The Great Leader, my grandfather, ruled with the support of the world's other superpower at the time, the Soviet Union, as well as our China. But today, the Soviet Union is history and China has become more integrated with the Western system. And the United States seeks regime change in my country. And yet, we have survived with our ideology and system intact. How? Because we have built a protection for ourselves in the form of nuclear weapons.
Let's be realistic, every terrorist came to Syria, he came through Turkey with the support of [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan. So, fighting those terrorists is like fighting the army of Erdogan, not the Turkish army, the army of Erdogan.
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