HAVANA , July 11 (UPI) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Havana, Cuba, Friday, his first stop on a tour of Latin America.
The Russian parliament's upper house canceled 90 percent of Cuba's $35.2 billion debt to Russia, a leftover from the Cold War days of close ties between the Soviet Union and Cuba, two days earlier. Although relations between the two countries cooled after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, they have recently improved, with Russian involvement in oil exploration near Cuba.