This is CBS I In The World. I'm John Bassley.

A man named Patricia, Nicolay Patricia, visiting Cuba often. Most importantly, however, I

learned from Mary Anastasia Grady, writing the America's Commonly America's Editor for

the Editor-in-Chore Board of the Wall Street Journal, where she's a member. That Patricia

chef is a master spy, very close to Vladimir Putin, and Patricia is also something of a conjurer

of the future. He predicts, for example, in an article published in March of this year,

that the Mexico State will regain the territory it lost to the US in the 19th century. That

would be Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico in California. Mary, a very good evening to you. I

start with this because it left me breathless. However, your column devotes all of our attention

to Russia in the Americas. Is Havana there, hub? Good evening to you, Mary.

Well, good evening, John. Most of your listeners will probably recall that Cuba and the Soviet Union

had quite a close relationship for all through the Cold War. That was broken when the Soviet

Union collapsed. But Vladimir Putin set about to reestablish it in the early 2000s, and in 2014,

he forgave Russia, forgave a large amount of debt that was owed, the Cuba owed to the former

Soviet Union or to Russia. So it was important then in the Cold War, and it is important now to

Vladimir Putin as a kind of weapon, if you will, or a base for threatening the US. There's a lot of

this kind of tit for tat that goes on well. If you can mess in my backyard, in Ukraine, I can mess

in your backyard, in Cuba. But what I was trying to explain in this piece is that the Russian strategy

for the region goes well beyond that sort of tit for tat, threatening or warning to the US about

Russia's reach into Cuba. Cuba is one place where Nikolai Petrochev, Vladimir Putin's top spy

operates, but he also is operating all throughout the region.

The region includes other surprising capitals, for example, Mexico City. Is that a long-standing

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