Rubio ties $100 million aid to Cuba's cooperation as Blocus deepens

Marco Rubio said Cuba’s leaders must change as Washington renewed a $100 million aid offer tied to cooperation, sharpening the fight over the blocus while the island’s electricity crisis deepens. Rubio made the comments on from Air Force One while traveling with Donald Trump to China.

Rubio said Cuba is "une économie ruinée et dysfonctionnelle" and added, "Nous allons leur donner une chance. Mais je ne pense pas que cela arrivera." He also said, "Je ne pense pas que nous pourrons changer la trajectoire de Cuba tant que ces gens seront au pouvoir."

Cuba is 150 kilometers from the Florida coast and has been under pressure from an economic crisis aggravated by energy shortages. On Tuesday, a power outage left 65 percent of the country in the dark, and Havana has outages lasting more than 20 hours a day. In the provinces, power outages last entire days, leaving residents of the island’s 9.6 million inhabitants to deal with a grid in critical condition.

Havana and Washington

Rubio previously said after talks at the Vatican that Cuba had rejected a U.S. offer of 100 million dollars in assistance, a statement Havana denied. On Wednesday, Cuba accused the United States of being responsible for the very "tendue" situation of the island’s electrical grid. Miguel Diaz-Canel wrote on X that the worsening situation had "une seule cause" and blamed a "blocus énergétique génocidaire" imposed by the United States.

Donald Trump signed a decree at the end of January saying Cuba represents an "extraordinary threat" to the United States and threatened reprisals against any country that wanted to supply or sell oil to Havana. Since the end of January, only one Russian oil tanker has been allowed to dock in Cuba with 100,000 tonnes of crude. Cuban minister of Energy and Mines Vicente de la O Levy said on state television on Wednesday that the Russian crude had temporarily improved the situation but was now "épuisées."

Cuba's electrical grid

A high-level diplomatic meeting took place on 10 April in Havana, placing the electricity crisis and fuel supply dispute alongside the wider argument over sanctions and cooperation. De la O Levy said, "La situation est très tendue, la chaleur continue d’augmenter, l’effet du blocus nous fait vraiment beaucoup de mal et nous ne recevons toujours pas de carburant."

The next move now sits with Washington and Havana: Rubio has tied aid to cooperation, while Cuba has tied its answer to the U.S. blocus and the fuel it says it still lacks. For families in Havana and the provinces, the immediate reality is longer blackouts and a grid that still has not stabilized.