MOSCOW, June 27. /TASS/. Russia is ready to help Cuba, which is in the illegal trade and economic blockade by the United States, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said on Tuesday at a meeting with visiting Cuban Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces Alvaro Lopez Miera.

"In a situation, when the United States has been continuing its illegal and illegitimate trade and economic blockade of Cuba for decades, we are ready to render assistance to the Island of Freedom, to lend a shoulder to our friends," he said.

The Russian minister stressed that Moscow and Havana speak in defense of the United Nations Charter, against its substituting for the so-called rule-based order, which reflects the collective West’s striving to exercise neocolonial ways of existence at the expense of oppressed countries and defeated rivals.