Cuba’s President, Miguel Díaz-Canel has criticised latest US sanctions on state-owned fuel company Cuba Petróleo (CUPET).
CUPET was added on Thursday to the list of companies and individuals sanctioned by the United States as part of an oil blockade aimed at exerting maximum pressure on the island.
“Imperial perversity knows no bounds. After banning any country that attempts to supply fuel to #Cuba from doing so, they are now targeting CUPET to further tighten the oil blockade, imposing new threats on those who trade with the Cuban company.
“We are witnessing the resurgence of fascism in its purest form.”
Miguel Díaz-Canel
In a statement today, CUPET said that the sanctions “seek to directly affect the normal conduct of our operations and strike a blow against a strategic sector of the country.”
When the U.S. government announced sanctions against Cuba’s state-owned oil and gas company, a move which some experts say will only deepen the island’s crises and hit vulnerable Cubans the hardest, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio asserted that key assets of the company were “unlawfully expropriated from American owners years ago.”
He also accused Cuba’s government of weaponizing energy. “While the Cuban people have suffered fuel shortages and blackouts because of decades of under-investment in critical infrastructure, Cuba’s Communist leaders have diverted energy resources to line their own pockets,” Rubio said in a statement.
He further noted, without providing evidence, that Cuban officials “resell countless barrels of scarce energy on the secondary market, hoarding energy supplies for its military, intelligence and repressive forces, and rationing energy as a tool of social control.”
Rubio said in a statement that all property or interests of CUPET located in the U.S. or in possession or control of U.S. people are blocked.
“ President Trump wants a new future for the Cuban people with greater economic and political freedom and opportunity.
“Until then, we will continue to target the Communist regime’s ability to leverage its energy trade to further its corrupt agenda and and violently repress the Cuban people.”
Marco Rubio
Bruno Rodríguez, Cuba’s Foreign Affairs Minister, pushed back against Rubio’s comments in a post on X.
“The US Secretary of State, driven by ambitions of conquest, presidential aspirations, and the vindictive sentiments of the elitist clique that propelled his political career, is now further tightening the economic and energy blockade against Cuba.
“To justify this, he doesn’t resort to excuses prepared by his State Department, but rather to the usual vulgar lies, the most aggressive, ignorant, and rabid rhetoric among Cuba’s enemies.”
Bruno Rodríguez
Cuba’s government has previously said that sanctions punish all Cubans and are aimed at strangling the economy to destabilize both the government and its people.
The U.S announcement comes almost a week after the U.S. government sanctioned Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel and other officials, as well as several institutions.
Cuba is already struggling under a decades-old embargo and a lack of petroleum as the U.S. keeps pushing for a change in its economic and political model.
Power outages, already common given the economic and energetic crisis gripping the island for the past five years, have only intensified since U.S. President Donald Trump threatened tariffs in late January on any country that sells or provides oil to Cuba.
Both countries have acknowledged that they’ve held talks, but the scope of them is unknown. Meanwhile, Trump has been threatening military action in Cuba ever since the U.S. military invaded Venezuela and arrested former President Nicolás Maduro.
Cuban President Announces Economic Reforms
Moreover, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel on Friday announced a package of economic reforms aimed at attracting investment, expanding participation by Cubans living abroad in the economy and decentralizing parts of the country’s administration.
Díaz-Canel said, according to a statement from the presidency that was republished by state-run media, “Every opportunity in the midst of a crisis must be seized as a moment for takeoff, as a moment for growth.”
The President did not provide details during remarks to state media. The reforms come amid heightened tensions in U.S.-Cuba relations.
The U.S. has pressed for economic reforms since launching a blockade that has deprived Cuba of fuel since February.
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