Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, sent an official letter to Vladimir Putin expressing full support for Russia's aggression against Ukraine. The letter, dated July 30, 2025, was published by the government-run newspaper El 19 Digital.
In their message, Ortega and Murillo not only praised the Russian Federation's full-scale war, but also officially recognized the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhia regions as part of Russian territory.
“ The Russian Federation is carrying out this special military operation to protect the lives of its people, to protect its legitimate territories, its sovereignty and territorial integrity ,” the letter says.
The Nicaraguan leadership openly calls the Russian war a “heroic struggle against neo-Nazism supported by NATO” and expresses solidarity with the Russian families who “gave their lives to protect the Russian people and peace in the world.”
The government and people of Nicaragua, according to the official letter, “express full support and full recognition” of the so-called “new territories of Russia” — the four occupied Ukrainian regions. In the finale of the address, Ortega conveys to Putin a “fraternal embrace” and wishes for “health and well-being for the Russian people.”
This statement logically fits into Ortega's long-standing pro-Russian orientation. Back in 1979, the USSR supported the rise to power of leftist rebels led by him, and since then the Kremlin has remained Nicaragua's main international ally. Ortega has been in power continuously since 2007, and his regime is often criticized for political repression, oppression of the opposition, control of the media, and authoritarian practices.
In recent years, Nicaragua has been actively restoring close ties with Moscow, opening the door to cooperation in the security sector, intelligence, finance, and energy.
Now Nicaragua has officially become one of the few countries to recognize the attempted annexation of parts of Ukraine, thereby finally cementing itself in the camp of international pariahs.
