SpaceWar.com reports: “A Russian nuclear-powered submarine and other naval vessels arrived in Cuba Wednesday for a five-day visit to the communist island off Florida’s coast in a show of force amid spiraling US-Russian tensions.

The submarine Kazan, which Cuba says is not carrying nuclear weapons, was accompanied by the frigate Admiral Gorshkov, as well as an oil tanker and a salvage tug.

Russia’s defense ministry said in a statement that prior to entering the Havana port, the fleet ‘completed an exercise on the use of high-precision missile weapons.’

The unusual deployment of the Russian military so close to the United States — particularly the powerful submarine — comes amid major tensions over the war in Ukraine, where the Western-backed government is fighting a Russian invasion.

‘We of course take it seriously, but these exercises don’t pose a threat to the United States,’ Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told journalists.

The port call coincided on Wednesday with a meeting in Moscow between Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, as the two former Cold War allies further tighten their links…”