CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Cuba Under Siege Battles U.S. Oil Blockade 

Photograph Source: hakkun – CC BY-SA 3.0

President Donald Trump on January 29 imposed import tariffs on any country providing Cuba with oil. The false claim that Cuba threatened terrorism against the United States served as pretext.  The U.S. Supreme Court on February 20 ruled that President Trump lacked constitutional authority for imposing tariffs. Now tariffs continue under different legal authorization.

The oil blockade will likely remain for a while. It constitutes for Cuba siege with deadly potential, as in a state of war. On display is the U.S government’s propensity, evident since the introduction of the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, to regard Cuba as a special case. Meanwhile, Cuba, and Venezuela with its oil, were the first targets of the refurbished Monroe Doctrine showing up in the revised National Security Strategy, released in November 2025.

With this blockade, no oil is going to enter Cuba. Venezuela, already heavily sanctioned by the U.S. government, lost control of its oil sales after being hit by a U.S. military attack on January 3.  Mexico in 2025 provided Cuba with 44% of its crude oil imports and that year was Cuba’s top supplier of oil.

Mexican President Claudia Scheinbaum on February 10 indicated that the country’s PEMEX oil company would not be sending oil to Cuba. Mexico is captive to the United States as regards oil. According to analyst Mateo Crossa, “Mexico imports 70 percent of the natural gas it consumes, 96 percent of which is supplied by the United States, revealing the country’s complete dependency.”

Russia had been a minor supplier of oil to Cuba with its last major shipment arriving in February 2025. Russia’s government announced on February 12 that it would “supply crude oil and petroleum products to Cuba in the near future as humanitarian aid.” A recent reportclaims that a Hong Kong-flagged tanker with Russian oil aboard will be arriving in Cuba in early March.

But a Moscow-based U.S. reporter more recently stated that Russian officials informed the visiting Cuban chancellor Bruno Rodríguez that Cuba would not be receiving Russian oil. Meanwhile Cuba is in the throes of worsening humanitarian crisis.

Alejandra Garcia writes of “long lines to access fuel, blackouts, hospitals without electricity, … families who travel kilometers (on foot, by bicycle, or on a cart) to obtain the most basic necessities … [B]uses have stopped running due to a lack of fuel.” He reports that at one hospital “a team of doctors had to operate on a pregnant woman using the light from their cell phones. The power outage put essential equipment out of service, including surgical lamps, anesthesia machines, and neonatal resuscitation bassinets.”

According to another report, “Since January 2026, the situation has........

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