"Given Russia's current financial position (read: bad) and the US's position (read: good) it makes a lot of sense for Cuba to pick the US right now over Russia.

"Given Russia's current financial position (read: bad) and the US's position (read: good) it makes a lot of sense for Cuba to pick the US right now over Russia. The money forgiveness is just the "cherry on top."" You can roughly translate as "Russia gave Cuba over to the US for free, plus the extra blaming". No wonder one will be in bad financial position when they have to forgive debts owned to them over and over.