Cuba’s Foreign Minister, Bruno Rodríguez, denounced this Saturday that the U.S. is imposing a “total blockade” on the Caribbean country, “similar to a military one,” referring to the oil siege initiated by Washington in January and the reinforced sanctions against companies that do business with the island nation.
Rodríguez stated on social media that the United States maintains a “plan of economic asphyxiation against Cuba” that “includes foreign companies not selling parts or technologies for Cuban thermoelectric plants” and “prevents any company in the world from selling oil” to the island.
Furthermore, he said, it “sanctions CUPET,” the Cuban state oil company dedicated to the extraction, refining, and production of crude oil on the island and which, according to Washington, includes key assets that were “illegally expropriated from American owners.”
Cuando el Secretario de Estado de EEUU hable de incompetencia en #Cuba, habría que preguntarle por qué miente de manera crónica y contradice al Presidente de #EEUU y a su vocera negando la existencia del bloqueo total de combustible que la Casa Blanca reconoce.
Si hubiera… pic.twitter.com/7xXV8SWPiz
— Bruno Rodríguez P (@BrunoRguezP) June 20, 2026
U.S. President Donald Trump established an Executive Order on May 1st that threatens sanctions against foreign entities operating in vital energy, defense, mining, and financial services sectors in the Caribbean nation.
Additionally, it includes a ban on entry into U.S. territory for foreign individuals who have had or maintain relations with Cuban government entities, are involved in human rights violations, or in acts of corruption.
Because of this, the Canadian mining company Sherritt, with the largest foreign investment on the island, immediately suspended its direct participation in nickel extraction; and the largest international hotel operators such as the Spanish Meliá and Iberostar, the Canadian Blue Diamond, and the Indonesian Archipiélago stopped operating facilities in the Caribbean nation.
In this regard, the Cuban Foreign Minister said that the “design” of the U.S. measures “pursues in detail the development” of the island’s economy and “the origin of all its funds.”
Furthermore, Rodríguez continued, the U.S. “blackmails and threatens states that sovereignly maintain cooperation agreements with Cuba in health matters.”
In recent months, the governments of Honduras, Guatemala, Jamaica, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Grenada, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago announced the end of their medical cooperation with the island or reformed its terms, due to U.S. pressure.
Cuba has been going through a deep energy crisis since mid-2024, aggravated since January by the U.S. oil siege, with blackouts of almost 40 consecutive hours in Havana and up to 72 continuous hours in the rest of the country, which has deepened the profound economic crisis the island had been dragging for six years.
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