Two Cuba policies, one fortnight

A US government plane landed in Havana on 10 April for the first time since 2016, carrying State Department officials who presented Cuba with a list of demands including prisoner releases, Starlink access, and compensation for assets seized in 1959.

Cuba confirmed the talks but called the US tariff threats blackmail and said its first condition was lifting the energy blockade. The visit opens a direct channel after a nine-year gap, but both sides' opening positions are publicly incompatible. Read full version ↓

On the same day US diplomats met Cuban foreign ministry officials, a separate meeting brought a senior State Department official together with Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, age 41, the grandson of former President Raúl Castro who holds no government post.

The choice signals Washington is probing Cuba's second power structure: the Castro family network that runs the military and controls 60 per cent of the hard-currency economy, separately from the elected government that the US was officially there to meet. Read full version ↓

The US gave Cuba until 24 April to free two named dissidents: artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and rapper Maykel Osorbo. The deadline passed with neither man released, and the US had said nothing publicly three days later.

Cuba's penal code makes releasing political prisoners a complicated legal process even with political will. The 14-day window was too short for that procedure. Washington's silence past the deadline follows a pattern documented over 25 years of US-Cuba ultimatums: conditions are set and then absorbed without announced cost. Read full version ↓

Cuba's Camilo Cienfuegos refinery, offline for four months, restarted on 17 April using crude delivered by the Russian tanker Anatoly Kolodkin. The restart cut the island's power deficit by about 20 per cent, producing four blackout-free days in Havana.

Cuba's Energy Minister said that fuel supply runs out at the end of April. The next Russian tanker, the Universal, was expected around 29 April. If it is delayed, the refinery shuts down and the blackouts return within roughly 12 days. Read full version ↓

Havana went four days without blackouts between 19 and 23 April because Russian crude had finally been refined into fuel for the power stations. Over the same four days, Holguín, Granma province and Santiago de Cuba all continued losing power for up to 24 hours a day.

Cuba's electricity grid has a single control centre in Havana that decides who gets power when supplies are short. The east absorbs the deficit first. This has been the operating rule for over 30 years, and the April figures show it running exactly as designed. Read full version ↓

Democratic senators Tim Kaine, Adam Schiff and Ruben Gallego introduced a resolution on 25 April requiring Congress to authorise any US military operation against Cuba, triggered by Trump's repeated public claim that Cuba is next. A Senate vote was due before 1 May.

Republicans held a 53-47 majority in the Senate and were expected to defeat the measure. The sponsors' aim was a permanent named roll-call: every senator on record about presidential military authority over Cuba, one week after Treasury issued a licence legalising the next Russian oil delivery to the island. Read full version ↓

On 16 April Amnesty International confirmed that none of the 2,061 people Cuba freed in its two 2026 pardon waves was on its list of political prisoners. Two other organisations, OCDH and Prisoners Defenders, checked separately and found the same result.

Cuba's pardons excluded people charged under the specific criminal articles used to prosecute activists, which is why the large headline number produced zero overlap with the political-prisoner rosters. The two people the US specifically asked Cuba to free remain detained. Read full version ↓

The informal Cuban exchange rate hit 530 pesos per dollar by 22 April, up from 510 when the state opened its currency offices to dollar cash on 7 April. The euro crossed 600 pesos, a record. The official state rate stayed at 492.

After 18 days the state currency reform produced no measurable improvement. Street money-changers offer no paperwork, instant payment and trusted networks; the state charges for all three. The 38-peso gap between the official and street rates is the market price for avoiding state-channel friction, and it widened, not narrowed, in the three weeks since the reform launched. Read full version ↓