Cuba restores power and pledges unyielding resistance to the US oil embargo

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel on Wednesday railed against “almost daily” threats from the US and vowed to meet the Trump administration’s move to choke off the island’s energy supplies with “opposed resistance”.

Energy officials said their comments came after the communist-run island nation of roughly 10 million people partially reconnected its power grid on Tuesday evening, after a nationwide blackout was reported for more than 29 hours.

Cuba’s grid operator, UNE, said on social media that it was gradually restoring power to all provinces and cities across the country, without providing further details on the cause of the power grid outage.

The country, just 90 miles from Florida, has been struggling with a worsening economic crisis in recent weeks.

The US has imposed an oil embargo on the island since January, shortly after it captured its ally and major supplier of oil, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, in a daring military operation.

US President Donald Trump has effectively cut off Cuba from Venezuelan oil, calling its government an “extraordinary and extraordinary threat” and vowing to impose tariffs on any country that supplies it with oil.

Trump has repeatedly talked up the prospect of a “friendly takeover” of Havana in recent days, suggesting the White House may turn its sights on Cuba after the Iran war. The US president has said he can do what he wants with the country, adding that he thinks he will have the “honour” of “taking Cuba”.

Cuba’s Díaz-Canel slammed US threats against Havana in a social media post.

“They intend to announce plans to take over the country, its resources, its assets, and they will also announce the economy that they want to suffocate to force us to surrender,” Díaz-Canel said at X on Wednesday, according to Google Translate.

“This is the only way to explain a terrible economic war as collective punishment against an entire people. Faced with the worst-case scenario, #Cuba is guided by one certainty: any external aggressor will face unyielding resistance,” he added.

Cuba’s president last week confirmed talks between the country’s government and the Trump administration, but warned that any prospect of a deal would take some time.

Analysts have described Cuba’s economic crisis as the biggest test the country has faced since the fall of the Soviet Union.