Moscow, Apr 8 (Prensa Latina) Cuba is ready for receiving at least 200,000 Russian tourists this year, the Tourism Counselor of the Cuban Embassy to Russia, Cristina Leon, said on Monday.

According to the diplomat, from January 1 to March 31, 2024, the tourist flow of Russians to Cuba was 66,887 citizens, which she considered a record figure, since in the same term of 2023 the country welcomed 32,224 people, the website Tourbus.ru published on Monday.

To skyrocket tourist traffic, Cuban authorities are negotiating to increase the number of flights from the Russian Federation and attract investors and hotel companies from Russia to the country’s hotel sector, Leon uttered.

At present, there are direct flights from Russia to Havana, Varadero and Cayo Coco, in Cuba, with an almost maximum occupancy factor of 94%.

In 2019, before the pandemic, there were 18 weekly flights from Russia to Cuba. And now the authorities want to expand the geography of departures, exceeding the figure up to 20 weekly flights,” the Cuban official concluded.

It should be recalled that Cuba received 185,000 Russian tourists in 2023. This upturn is grounded in the activity of tour operators, mainly Pegas Touristik, which along with Nordwind airline pursues flight programs from Moscow to the popular resorts of Varadero and Cayo Coco.

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Havana, Apr 9 (Prensa Latina) Students and professors of the Higher Institute of Design (ISDi) at the University of Havana are holding in this capital on Tuesday a collective exhibition with posters in support of Palestine, the educational institution informed.

In a note via e-mail to Prensa Latina, ISDi stated that the posters, which carry a visual graphic message, show the solidarity of this group, representing the Cuban people, identified with the cause of the Palestinian people in their struggle to recover their territory, peace, and freedom.

The exhibition will be opened to the audience at the art center “Habana Espacios Creativos”, located at Teniente Rey and “Habana” streets, in Old Havana municipality, this Tuesday afternoon.

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Ecuadorian police forcibly broke into the Mexican embassy in Quito on night Friday and arrested Ecuadorian former Vice President Jorge Glas, hours after the Mexican government granted him political asylum.

April 6 (teleSUR) The condemnation by Latin American countries of the violent invasion of the Mexican embassy in the Ecuadorian capital, Quito, has not been delayed.

The Brazilian government condemned, “in the strongest terms”, the “repudiable” police intrusion in the diplomatic headquarters. The measure of the “Ecuadorian Government constitutes a serious precedent, which must be strongly repudiated, whatever the justification for its implementation,” said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Brazil.

Miguel Díaz-Canel, the Cuban President expressed solidarity with the Government of Mexico. “All our solidarity with Mexico, in the face of the unacceptable violation of its Embassy in Quito,” Díaz-Canel wrote on X.  He stated that “the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which is an essential component of international law, must be respected by all”.

For his part, the Bolivian president Luis Arce condemned and described the action as “unacceptable”. In a message on his social networks, Arce said that Bolivia, respectful “of the rules governing diplomatic relations, strongly condemns the intrusion of the Ecuadorian police” in the Mexican embassy in Quito, an event “unprecedented in the history of international law”.

The Chilean government also expressed “its strongest condemnation” on Saturday and expressed “its deep concern about the violation of the right to asylum”. The Chilean Ministry of Foreign Affairs conveyed its solidarity “to all the diplomatic staff of the Embassy of Mexico in Ecuador” and asked that “this incident between sister nations, with which Chile maintains close relations and of historical friendship, is soon overcome”.

On the other hand, the Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, described this Saturday as a “fascist act” the police intrusion in the Embassy of Mexico in Quito. “All this constitutes an action that not even in the most atrocious dictatorships in the region had been recorded (…), creating a worrying precedent for Ecuador and the world,” said the Bolivarian government in X.

Xiomara Castro, the Honduran president, described the police intrusion into the embassy as “intolerable”. Castro indicated in X that the aggression constitutes an intolerable act for the international community, since it ignores the historic and fundamental right to asylum.