Rioters have taken to the black-out hit streets of Cuba (Image: Getty)
Rioters took to the black-out hit streets of Cuba as the Communist government revealed its fuel reserves were exhausted. Hundreds of Cubans blocked roads in the capital, Havana, shouting “switch on the lights” in protest at power cuts.
The island country’s energy grid suffered a major failure on Thursday, severing power to Cuba’s eastern provinces, according to local authorities. Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel described the energy situation as “tense” a day earlier. His comment came after supplies of oil delivered by a Russian vessel in late March ran out. Cuba produces barely 40% of the fuel it needs to power its economy.
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Power cuts in Havana, where authorities have been rationing energy, stretched to 24 consecutive hours on Thursday.
Cubans in parts of the city banged pots and pans and set fire to rubbish bins to protest the blackouts the day before.
Energy and Mines Minister Vicente de la O Levy appeared on Cuban television to describe the energy situation as “critical”.
While Cuba’s power grid is crumbling, the government has also blamed the outages on US sanctions after President Donald Trump in January warned of tariffs on any country selling or sending oil to Cuba.
Russia announced plans to send a second fuel ship to Cuba in early April. According to Russian news reports, the oil tanker left the port of Vysotsk in January, but it has been stuck in the same spot in the Atlantic for several weeks.
Blackouts have led to reduced working hours and food going off as fridges stop working. In some cases, hospitals have even had to cancel operations.
Cuba’s energy situation is ‘critical’, the country’s energy minister says (Image: Getty)
Mr Trump’s administration has demanded Cuba release political prisoners and move toward political and economic liberalisation in return for a lifting of the sanctions.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe met Cuban officials, including former president Raúl Castro’s grandson, during a high-level visit to the island on Thursday.
A CIA official said Mr Ratcliffe was in Cuba to deliver Mr Trump’s message that the US is prepared to “seriously” engage on economic and security issues, but only if Cuba makes fundamental changes.
The US stressed Cuba cannot continue to be a “safe haven for adversaries in the Western hemisphere” while the Cuban delegation insisted the island poses no security threat to the United States.
Meanwhile, a number of news outlets reported on Friday that the US is moving towards indicting Raúl Castro, 94, in connection with the shooting down of planes in 1996.
Mr Castro succeeded his brother, Fidel Castro, to become president between 2008 and 2018. He served as Cuba’s armed forces minister from 1959 until the year he assumed the presidency.
