HAVANA – The Cuban government announced Monday that its military exercise Bastion, which it organizes annually to prepare the country for a possible invasion, will take place next week.

The exercise “has as its objective the training of individual leaders and chiefs and the leadership and command structure” in order to “raise the nation’s preparedness for defense and to get troops ready to meet different kinds of enemy action,” the bulletin released in the official media said.

Bastion will end Nov. 28, and on Sunday will be National Defense Day, with maneuvers and tactical exercises by the armed forces, the Interior Ministry and “other components of the territorial defense system.”

The official bulletin announced that there will be “troop and war-materiel movements, flights by the air arm and explosions when required.”

In September 2008 Cuba’s president, Gen. Raul Castro, postponed Bastion for that year because of the devastation wrought by the two hurricanes that battered the island within weeks of each other.

But in June, amid Cuba’s worst recession in 50 years, the military said that the only thing Havana would not be saving on was its “combat readiness” because, if it did, it would no longer be an independent nation. EFE