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| Many petrol stations in Havana have remained closed amid the shortages (Image: Shutterstock) |
According to reports from Russian news agencies, a tanker carrying oil to Cuba has entered the waters off the Communist-run island. The oil shipment - the first to reach Cuba since January - comes hours after US President Donald Trump said that he had no problem with countries, including Russia, sending supplies to the island.
A de facto oil blockade that Trump's administration had imposed on Cuba since January appeared to be eased by his comment. Due to the blockade's exacerbated fuel shortages, Cuba has been experiencing a series of nationwide blackouts. Russian media reports the Russian tanker Anatoly Kolodkin was carrying a "humanitarian shipment" of 100,000 tonnes of crude oil.
The World Health Organization (WHO) issued a warning last week that Cuban hospitals were having difficulty maintaining emergency and intensive care services due to severe fuel shortages. Since US forces seized Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro on January 3, the island's situation has deteriorated rapidly. Maduro is a close ally of the Cuban government and had been providing the island with oil at highly preferential terms. Additionally, Trump stated that any nation sending oil to Cuba would be subject to tariffs.
Cuba was added to the list of countries that can't get oil from Russia by the US Treasury Department just over a week ago. However, Trump stated to journalists on board Air Force One on Sunday that he had "no problem" with Russia delivering oil to Cuba, in an apparent reversal of his strategy. "There is a tanker that we have. "They need... they have to survive, so we don't mind if someone gets a boatload," he said. Given that Trump appeared to redouble his threats against the Havana government by telling journalists on Sunday that "Cuba's finished," it was unclear from his comment whether this represented a permanent reversal of the fuel blockade policy or just a temporary softening. "They run a bad government. They have very bad and corrupt leadership, and whether or not they get a boat of oil it's not going to matter."
The Russian tanker is expected to offload the oil in Matanzas terminal in the coming hours.
Dmitri Peskov, a spokesperson for the Kremlin, stated that Russia saw it as "its duty to step up and provide necessary assistance to our Cuban friends."
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He added that the shipment had been "raised well in advance... with our American counterparts".
The Cuban authorities have portrayed the arrival of the Russian tanker as "breaking" the US-imposed oil blockade.
The oil the Russian tanker carries is expected to provide Cuba with a short-term lifeline.
Its Communist government, led by President Miguel DÃaz-Canel, has been in talks with the Trump administration to try to find a route out of the crisis.
However, there are a number of political and economic stumbling blocks that both sides have made public, making it difficult to see where they could come together. Cuba's leadership has stated that it will not accept any forced changes to the personnel or political direction of its government, despite Trump's recent claim that he could "take" Cuba. Cuba was already facing its worst economic and energy crisis since the end of the Cold War due to a combination of a drop in tourism after the coronavirus pandemic and government economic mismanagement.
The de facto fuel blockade has made the crisis even worse.
Source: BBC
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