The $80 million T-72B tanks are a significant purchase for the hemisphere’s second poorest country, which spent $71.6 million total on its military in 2015, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
Vladimir Putin’s Russia, eager to return to superpower status, is increasingly trying to play out its conflict with the United Sates in Latin America while “profiting from weapons sales and challenging and provoking the USA,” Costa Rican social scientist Constantino Urcuyo told a U.S. congressional committee in Washington, D.C. last Thursday.
