Cuba Dispatch

In 72 hours Washington moved on Cuba across three fronts: a second sanctions wave reaching the civilian ministries and the party, a criminal indictment of Raul Castro over the 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shoot-down, and a carrier strike group in the Caribbean. The economic siege is now a multi-domain pressure posture. Havana calls it coercion.

Three fractures in one fortnight. The Sovcomflot Universal sits 1,000 nautical miles out with 270,000 barrels of diesel and no lawful Cuba destination after GL 134B expired on 16 May. The eastern provinces have run on isolated microsystems since the 14 May grid disconnection. Marco Rubio reopened the Vatican channel on 9 May.

Trump signed a new executive order on 1 May targeting Cuban officials and their adult relatives, hours before Raúl Castro stood beside Díaz-Canel at a rally fronting the US Embassy. The Senate had blocked a war-powers check 51-47 two days earlier. By 5 May the Guiteras plant was offline and Russian crude was admitted to be running out.

Treasury extended the licence covering the next Russian tanker bound for Havana on Saturday 18 April, eight days after a US government aircraft landed in Cuba for the first time since 2016. A two-week ultimatum for two named dissidents lapsed without releases. The grid eased in Havana while the eastern provinces held at 24-hour blackouts.

Tonight the Cuban grid is forecast to black out 1,732 MW of load at the 20:30 peak, more than half of projected demand. The fuel shortage driving that collapse is no longer incidental to US policy. It is the product of a two-tier sanctions architecture that eased Venezuelan oil sales to most of the world on 18 March while keeping the Cuban state explicitly carved out, a choice Havana now frames as a deliberate energy siege.