Russia, Cuba slam US energy blockade of island in show of solidarity in Moscow

MOSCOW – Russia and Cuba on Feb 18 slammed the US energy blockade of the Caribbean island in a show of solidarity in Moscow, where Havana’s foreign minister was due to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Cuba’s top diplomat, Mr Bruno Rodriguez, travelled to traditional ally Russia seeking help as his country reels from a severe fuel crisis – intensified by Washington’s de facto oil blockade.

US President Donald Trump cut off key supplies of Venezuelan oil to Cuba after ousting Venezuela’s former leader Nicolas Maduro and has threatened sanctions on states that sell oil to Havana.

Mr Rodriguez met his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov ahead of seeing Mr Putin, with the long-serving Russian diplomat using Soviet-era language to criticise Washington.

“We call on the US to show common sense and refrain from the military-maritime blockade of the island of freedom,” Mr Lavrov said.

Havana has been allied to Moscow since the 1960s socialist revolution, relying on the Soviet Union for economic and political support for decades. The Kremlin maintained close ties with Cuba after the collapse of the USSR.

Moscow, Mr Lavrov said, stood in “solidarity with our friends” as he called Cuba a “brotherly state to us”, without making any concrete pledges of material support.

He condemned the US for, “after more than a 70-year blockade, now even threatening to toughen their illegitimate and anti-humane actions”.

The US has had sanctions on Cuba since the 1960s.

‘Unjust’

The island has long grappled with a severe fuel shortage but the latest US measures have deepened the crisis.

Russia, one of the world’s largest energy producers, has mulled over aid for Cuba, with state media reporting last week that Moscow could send oil to the island.

Mr Putin’s spokesman, Mr Dmitry Peskov, said on Feb 18: “We provide assistance to our friends.”

But Moscow is yet to publicly undertake to send fuel or other much-needed assistance.

At the talks with Mr Lavrov, Mr Rodriguez said that Cuba would not change its political course under US pressure.

He denounced Washington for the “deterioration of the international order, which was already unjust and precarious, but which today is being replaced by the practices of the United States government”.

Since sending troops to Ukraine in 2022, Moscow – under massive Western sanctions – has solidified Soviet-era alliances, such as its ties with North Korea.

Cuba has not denounced Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine and there have been reports throughout the four-year war of Cuban fighters being recruited by Russia.

The Kremlin said Mr Putin, who has not yet publicly commented on the situation in Cuba, will receive Mr Rodriguez later on Feb 18.

The Russian leader has refrained in recent weeks of sharp criticism of the US while talks on ending the four-year war in Ukraine, mediated by Washington, are ongoing.

Mr Putin, a former spy with the KGB, Russia’s foreign intelligence agency, visited Cuba in 2014, meeting the island’s revolution leader, Mr Fidel Castro, who died two years later. AFP