In a context of growing confrontation between liberal democracies and autocracies, Nicaragua has joined the bloc led by Russia and China. Together they have taken advantage of the unprecedented increase in irregular migration by facilitating and instrumentalizing it as a form of attack on Western countries, the Americas and the United States with the purpose of affecting its systemic vulnerabilities and institutions.

Forty dictatorships generate 35 percent of international migration, including Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela, which have pushed more than 20 percent of their populations into exile. According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), as of 2020, at least 20 million people will migrate.

These people migrate because of the economic deterioration of their countries, the persecution of dissidents and critical voices, the lack of freedoms and the absence of democracy, which limits their opportunities.

Nicaragua’s strategic alliance with Russia, China, Iran and North Korea to obtain protection, political, economic and military support, led the dictatorships of the Americas to join in the development of hybrid aggressions of different types, particularly through the instrumentalization of migration, which also generates opportunities for the transit of terrorists.

Totalitarian regimes use migration as an escape valve to reduce their economic and social problems and to improve their financial statistics with the foreign currency they receive through remittances, which allow them to transfer resources towards security concerns. In this way they get rid of their opponents, increase social control and obtain extraordinary income by facilitating their own- and third-party migration.

The instrumentalization of migration affects the receiving countries: it erodes confidence in their institutions, deteriorates the image of governments, undermines management systems, polarizes society and provokes internal crises, with the consequent growth of extreme right-wing political positions. This diverts attention from the causes of migration, which are the lack of democracy and the economic failure of the dictatorships that generate and facilitate them.

The Russian presence in Nicaragua and its strategic links with Cuba and Venezuela, the main countries of origin of the flow of migrants in the continent together with Haiti, facilitated the advice of Russian experts, located in a training center under the control of the Russian Ministry of the Interior, to convert the Managua International Airport into an authentic hub to promote migration to the United States from four continents.

In the current new era of confrontation, with the evident cooperation of the members of each bloc to weaken adversaries, hybrid threats have acquired a preponderant role, among which the instrumentalization of migration stands out, as pointed out by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Hybrid attacks constitute an exercise in unconventional warfare that seeks to place itself below the threshold of the conflict, avoiding the attribution of responsibility to the attacker and affecting confidence in democracy by transferring the confrontation to the internal space of the adversary. Their strategic advantages and low cost explain the recurrence and intensification of their use.

In complicity with Cuba and Venezuela, the Ortega Murillo regime, demonstrating a strong political will typical of a centralized power obsessed with micromanagement, prepared the conditions to transfer, in a period of two years and three months, more than 600,000 irregular migrants from the Caribbean, Asia, Africa and Europe to the southern border of the United States.

The strategy included visa-free agreements and a policy equivalent to universal visa-free travel through the collection of laissez-passer and tourist cards, contracting charter flight operators, and training Managua airport personnel and the police and army who protect the air corridor.

Although the flow of more than a thousand charter flights caused a wide international repercussion, encouraged by visa-free travel, two thirds of the total number of migrants using the Managua hub arrived via commercial airlines on scheduled flights with layovers in other countries in the Americas.

For the Nicaraguan Democratic Concertation (CDN), the hybrid war involves the region in a foreign conflict, which takes advantage of the vulnerability of the migrant and harms the human right to emigrate, increasing costs, increasing rejection and xenophobia, making insertion in the country of destination more difficult and increasing corruption.

Russian involvement in the passage of irregular migrants towards the United States

Recently, the organization Expediente Abierto developed the Dialogue: “Manipulated Exoduses: The use of migration as a weapon of political warfare in the age of authoritarianism”, to analyze the development of this phenomenon that, in our hemisphere, takes advantage of the human drama caused by the precarious conditions in which thousands of people live, who also face political persecution, lack of opportunities, insecurity or climatic disasters, among others.

The panelists agreed that unscrupulous governments, authoritarian regimes, transnational criminal networks, opportunistic politicians and merchants in search of easy profits almost always act in coordination and take advantage of the drama faced by the migrant population.

In addition, they presented the research: “Instrumentalization of migration in Latin America as an exercise of hybrid warfare against the United States of America”, which delves into the role that the Ortega Murillo regime plays in promoting a new route for the irregular trafficking of migrants from America, Europe, Asia and Africa. The strategy is developed in alliance with Cuba and Venezuela, under the coordination of Russia that pushes it with economic, but above all political objectives.

In fact, the mechanism used by Russia to allow migrants from four continents to transit to the United States through Nicaragua is similar to the one promoted in 2021 to move Iraqis and Afghans to Poland and Lithuania through Belarus.

Nicaragua replicated the practice of visa-free travel, the use of charter flights, and the involvement and support of the armed forces to ensure the passage of migrants, which was implemented by Belarus at the time.

Russia’s interest in our continent dates back to the second half of the last century when it established relations with the dictatorships of Cuba and Nicaragua, and in this century Venezuela has joined them. Today, they constitute the most autocratic and human rights violating trio of the continent.

It is no coincidence that in recent years around 20 percent of the population of these three countries, which together total a population of 45 million, went into exile in search of better opportunities. Nearly 11 million Nicaraguans, Venezuelans and Cubans left their homes. Most Nicaraguans and Cubans settled in the United States, and Venezuelans in Colombia, Peru and the United States.

In Nicaragua the exodus began in 2018 in the wake of the socio-political crisis, when the Ortega Murillo’s increased their ties with Russia, to seek political protection and obtain military and intelligence assistance. This in turn allows Russia to use Nicaragua to show a significant presence in Central America, where it intends to influence political dynamics, counter, and if possible destabilize, US interests.

In recent years China joined this alliance and succeeded in getting the Ortega Murillos to break off relations with Taiwan.

During the forum, one of the panelists, journalist Marc Marginedas warned that the United States and American journalism should be more aware to address the magnitude of this problem and its consequences within the country and not lose sight of the fact that it is evident that Russia pushes from outside the migratory mechanism that drives Nicaragua.

Marginedas mentioned that in September 2023 the United States disclosed in its social networks figures that show that it is Nicaragua’s main commercial partner and questioned that it continues to push this relationship with a country that is trying to undermine its stability, not only through migration. He also criticized that it welcomes and makes pacts with Russia, which has declared itself its enemy.

In the last two weeks Nicaragua voted with Russia against the United Nations (UN) Pact for the Future, and led the inclusion of Russia as an observer in the Central American Parliament (Parlacen).

In the Nicaraguan Democratic Concertation (CDN), we consider that there is an evident contradiction between the political-military world that the Ortega Murillo regime, allied with Russia, is pushing, and the economic world from which it is profiting and whose resources it is using to undermine the stability of the United States.

We warn that it is necessary for the U.S. authorities to rethink this situation, because beyond the promises of their leaders, if there are no changes, the flow of irregular migrants that continue to arrive at their border will not stop, and instability in their country and the rest of the region will continue to worsen.