A high-ranking Cuban general, who also serves as Havana's defense minister, recently visited Syria to help support Bashar al-Assad in the country's civil war, in which the dictator's forces are fighting both rebel groups and the ISIS terror organization.

Gen. Leopoldo Cintra Frias, the nominal head of the communist island's armed forces, was apparently accompanied by other Cuban military operatives who may be preparing to man Russian-made tanks to aid Assad, Fox News reported.

The Cuban troops may have received training in Russia and arrived in Syria on Russian planes, an unidentified U.S. official told the news channel. The source's account was based on a report by an an Arab military officer, who apparently witnessed the arrival at Damascus airport, noted Jaime Suchlicki of the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies.

"It doesn't surprise me," said Suchlicki, the institute's executive director. "They have a very close relationship. The Russians have been training the Cubans for years and supplying them with all sorts of military equipment."

Cuba's military is small by global standards, but the island nation's troops are "very well-trained," Suchlicki said.

The involvement of the country's troops in the Syrian civil war, meanwhile, may negatively affect Havana's recent rapprochement with the United States, given that President Barack Obama has repeatedly called on Assad to give up power in the Middle Eastern country.

Chiding U.S. media outlets, meanwhile, a semi-official Russian television network dismissed the reports of Cuban military support as mere speculation. RT challenged the Fox News report, noting that it was based solely on an unnamed source, along with the University of Miami institute.

The news channel pointed out that the U.S. Defense and State departments have also accused Moscow of recently bombing what it called "U.S.-backed rebels" instead of ISIS installations across the large swaths of Syrian territory controlled by the terror group.

Official Cuban media, meanwhile, have made no effort to hide Havana's sympathy for Assad. Granma, the mouthpiece of the country's ruling Communist Party, for instance, has referred to the dictator's opponents as "extremist groups."