Nicaraguan dictator Daniel Ortega on Thursday expressed solidarity with Russian President Vladimir Putin after the drone attack carried out against the Kremlin this week.
“With the usual affection and admiration, in these historic days of commemoration of the victory over Nazism, days that are also days of struggle against the same enemies of humanity, we salute Your Excellency condemning the infamous attack carried out yesterday by known perpetrators against the installations of the Kremlin,” Ortega wrote to Putin in a letter.
“Our condemnation is also a condemnation against all forms of terrorism and against the fascism that has been reproducing itself like evil, threatening great and free peoples like your people,” he added.
Ortega said he was sure “that the enemies of the human family will not prevail, just as they could not triumph in the battles in which millions of Soviet families lived the supreme sacrifice and the glory of victory.”
In Russia, May 9 is known as Victory Day, marking Nazi Germany’s capitulation to the Soviet Union in World War II.
“For peace, the right to freedom, well-being and the common good in the world”, wrote the dictator, who signed the letter together with his wife, Rosario Murillo.
Moscow blamed the attack directly on Kiev. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has denied any connection to the case, saying his country does not target Russian territory. Russia also accused the United States of being behind the aggression, which was categorically denied by the Americans.
Nicaragua and Russia, which established diplomatic ties in 1944, strengthened bilateral ties and cooperation after Ortega and the Sandinistas returned to power in 2007.
Russia is a longtime ally of Nicaragua, and during the first Sandinista government (1979-1990) supplied Soviet weaponry to the Nicaraguan Armed Forces.
Nicaragua is one of the few countries, along with Venezuela and the small island nations of Nauru and Tuvalu, to join Russia in recognizing the independence of Georgia’s breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and has been welcoming Russian officials from high-ranking since the invasion of Ukraine.
Opposition
Nicaragua’s opposition leader, Félix Maradiaga, recently released after spending 611 days in solitary confinement in his country, will receive an award at the next edition of the Geneva Summit on Human Rights and Democracy, organized by 25 international NGOs on May 17.
Maradiaga, who was expelled from Nicaragua and had his nationality revoked after his release, will receive the award at a ceremony that will be attended by ambassadors to the United Nations, prominent activists and journalists from around the world, the summit organizers said in a statement.
The Nicaraguan leader, a former candidate in the presidential elections of his country, was chosen to receive the award in the 15th edition of the summit “for his firm defense of democracy in the face of the brutal dictatorship of Daniel Ortega”, added the organizers.
They recalled that Maradiaga had the courage to try to run for president of Nicaragua “despite the risk to his life and freedom”.
Maradiaga has already participated as a speaker in the 2019 edition of the Summit on Human Rights and Democracy, where he gave an interview to EFE, and his wife Berta Valle participated in the 2022 edition, when she publicly asked in Geneva for her husband’s release.
The Nicaraguan leader said today that he was very proud of the award and stated that he would receive it “not only on behalf of civil resistance in Nicaragua, but also on behalf of human rights defenders around the world who remain in arbitrary detention”.
Other previous winners of the Human Rights and Democracy Summit who have also been jailed for their activism include Russian oppositionist Alexei Navalny, Saudi blogger Raif Badawi and Mauritanian anti-slavery activist Biram Dah Abeid.
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