President Daniel Ortega’s son, an influential figure in Nicaragua’s leftist government, has reached out quietly to the Biden administration in recent months in an effort to re-engage with the United States, according to people familiar with the matter.
Laureano Ortega’s overture comes at a time when he and other members of his family and his father’s inner circle are under U.S. sanctions and Managua is seeing its Russian ally increasingly isolated by Washington and other Western powers over President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.
The United States and Nicaragua have been at odds for years but relations took an especially hard hit when Daniel Ortega, a former Marxist guerrilla, won a fourth consecutive term in November after jailing political rivals and cracking down on critical media. U.S. President Joe Biden dismissed the election as a sham.
(Reporting by Matt Spetalnick; Editing by Sandra Maler)
