MOSCOW, January 30. /TASS/. Washington’s calculations regarding Latin American countries have failed to pan out, despite the steps taken by the US, even by using economic pressure, Director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Latin American Department Alexander Shchetinin told TASS.

"The past year showed what Washington didn’t seem to expect. Its schemes have begun to run out of steam," the diplomat noted. "The region turned out to be more complicated and diverse than the simplistic calculations of American radicals. Thus, despite the choking sanctions and the color revolution strategies, they [the Americans — TASS] failed to carry out their blitzkrieg against Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua."

The diplomat noted that Washington’s attempts "to remold the Latin American region according to its geopolitical interests raise concern." "The obsolete Monroe Doctrine was taken as its ideological basis. Efforts aimed at toppling unwanted regimes or ‘steering’ those undecided on the ‘right path’, tearing apart the regional integration processes and imposing rigid neoliberal models have become an integral part of that course," Shchetinin noted.

The diplomat stressed that unlawful restrictions and pressure had been one of the main tools of Washington’s policy. "The tightening of the US economic blockade against Cuba is a vivid example of that."

He added that Moscow was opposed to attempts to destabilize Latin America and would continue "to provide the necessary political and diplomatic support to its partners and friends in the international arena and cultivate trade and economic ties [with them].".