(AFP) – A Russian oil tanker docked in a Cuban port on Tuesday to deliver the first crude shipment to the crisis-hit island since January after Washington gave a reprieve from its fuel blockade. The Anatoly Kolodkin, a tanker under US sanctions, entered the port of Matanzas, east of Havana, after sunrise to bring 730,000 barrels of crude following a three-week journey from Russia.
US President Donald Trump’s decision to let Russia deliver the oil avoids a confrontation with Moscow and provides temporary relief to a country that has endured blackouts, fuel rationing, and dwindling public transportation. “It’s great that the country is receiving oil because we need it for the crisis we are facing,” Yoanna Rivero, a 49-year-old pharmacy worker who was exercising near the port, told AFP. Felipe Serrano, a 76-year-old security guard, was waiting for the Russian ship to arrive. “This is crucial for us to be able to survive because the country is paralyzed,” he said.
Analysts, however, said the shipment would give Cuba only a brief respite. “It can offer temporary breathing room, but it does not come close to resolving the scale of the deficit the country is facing,” Ricardo Torres, a Cuban economist at American University in Washington, told AFP. “It is clearly not enough,” he said, noting Cuba’s power problems are “structural rather than episodic.” The Russian crude will be refined to produce gasoline for transportation as well as diesel and fuel oil for backup power generators, Irenaldo Perez, deputy director of the state-run oil firm CUPET, told official media. Analysts say it could take around three weeks to refine and distribute.
The Cuban foreign ministry thanked Russia for its solidarity, saying on X, “this valuable assistance arrives amid the energy blockade imposed by the United States, which is trying to strangle the Cuban people.” The Russian embassy in Cuba said on X it was its “duty to help our Cuban brothers under these difficult conditions!”
Trump, who has mused about “taking” communist-ruled Cuba, said Sunday that he did not object to Russia or others sending oil to the island because Cubans “have to survive.” The White House denied that there was any change to US sanctions policy. “We allowed this ship to reach Cuba in order to provide humanitarian needs to the Cuban people. These decisions are being made on a case-by-case basis,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said. The Kremlin said the shipment was discussed in advance with Washington.
Cuba was cut off from oil supplies in January after US forces ousted its main regional ally, Venezuela’s socialist leader Nicolas Maduro, and Trump threatened tariffs on countries that send crude to the country. While Trump has warned that “Cuba is next,” President Miguel Diaz-Canel confirmed in March that Cuban and US officials had held talks. Ricardo Herrero, executive director of the Cuba Study Group, a nonpartisan policy group in Washington, said the aim of restricting oil was to force Havana “to make real concessions at the negotiating table.” “The strategy here is to drive the system to the brink,” Herrero told AFP. “But it’s not to precipitate a full-blown societal or humanitarian collapse.” “It’s all consistent with the idea that the US holds all the cards and they’ll decide when to hold, when to fold, and when they go all in,” he said.
Cubans have endured seven nationwide blackouts since 2024, including two in March, and fuel prices have soared. The blackouts, as well as persistent shortages of food and medicine, have fueled public frustration and some rare protests. Herrero said the shipment was just “another donation” by Cuba’s Russian ally, but he doubted that Moscow would want to subsidize the Cuban economy in the long term. “This is not going to help the economy recover,” he said. “This is just humanitarian aid.”
– Lisandra Cots in Matanzas, Cuba, with Laurent Thomet in Havana.
© 2024 AFP
