“This issue was indeed raised in advance during our contacts with our American counterparts,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, without providing more details. File.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

A Russian oil tanker under U.S. sanctions is due to arrive in Cuba by Tuesday (March 31, 2026) despite a de facto American fuel blockade of the energy-starved island, according to shipping data.

The Anatoly Kolodkin, which is carrying 730,000 barrels of crude, was off the eastern tip of Cuba on Sunday (March 29), according to shipping tracker MarineTraffic.

The tanker, traveling at 12 knots, is now scheduled to arrive at the western port of Matanzas on Tuesday (March 31). It was previously forecast to arrive Monday (March 30).

It would be the first shipment of oil to the island since January, bringing some temporary relief to a country of 9.6 million people that has endured a deepening energy and economic crisis.

Communist-ruled Cuba lost its main regional ally and oil supplier in January when U.S. forces captured Venezuela’s socialist leader Nicolas Maduro.

Also read: Oil, power, and politics of disruption

U.S. President Donald Trump subsequently threatened to impose tariffs on any country sending oil to Cuba and has mused about “taking” the island.

He renewed his threats on Friday (March 27), saying “Cuba is next” at an investment forum in Miami.

Jorge Pinon, an expert on Cuba’s energy sector at the University of Texas at Austin, said he was surprised the United States did not try to intercept the Russian tanker before it approached Cuba.

“I think now the chances that the United States will try to stop her have basically disappeared,” Mr. Pinon told AFP.

Once the boat enters Cuban waters, he said, it “is almost impossible for the U.S. government to stop it.”

The New York Times, citing an unnamed U.S. official briefed on the matter, said the U.S. Coast Guard was allowing the tanker to reach Cuba.

The U.S. Coast Guard did not reply to an AFP request for comment.

Daily outages

After Washington launched the oil blockade, President Miguel Diaz-Canel imposed emergency measures to conserve fuel, including strict rationing of gasoline.

He warned this month that “any external aggressor will encounter an unbreakable resistance.”

Fuel prices have soared, public transport has dwindled and some airlines have suspended flights to Cuba, hitting the country’s fragile economy.

Cubans have endured regular outages as its aging power plants struggle to meet demand, with seven nationwide blackouts since 2024, including two this month and sparking rare protests.

A humanitarian aid convoy brought more than 50 tonnes of medicine, food, solar panels and other goods to Cuba by air and sea in the past week, with two sailboats bringing the last shipments from Mexico on Saturday (March 28).

The Anatoly Kolodkin, which is under U.S. sanctions, left the Russian port of Primorsk on March 8.

It was escorted by a Russian navy ship across the English Channel, but the two vessels parted ways when the tanker entered the Atlantic, according to the British Royal Navy.

Another ship that was reportedly carrying Russian diesel to Cuba, the Hong Kong-flagged Sea Horse, arrived in Venezuela instead earlier this week.

Diesel an ‘urgent need’

Once the Anatoly Kolodkin’s crude arrives in Cuba, it would take about 15-20 days to process the oil and another 5-10 days to deliver its refined products, Mr. Pinon said.

“The urgent need today in Cuba is diesel,” the former oil executive said.

The Russian shipment could be converted into 250,000 barrels of diesel, enough to cover the country’s demand for around 12.5 days, according to Mr. Pinon.

Mr. Pinon said the government would have to decide whether to use the fuel for backup power generators or for the buses, tractors and trains needed to keep the economy going for two weeks.

“If you are Diaz-Canel or somebody making the decision, you go, ‘OK, where where do I go with that diesel’?” he said.

“Do I want to generate more electricity so there are less apagones (blackouts)? Or do I want to put it in the transportation sector?”

Published – March 30, 2026 07:37 am IST

Activists from the Nuestra America Convoy embrace after disembarking in Havana Bay after they were located by the Mexican Navy after they went missing while carrying humanitarian aid from Mexico to Cuba, in Havana, Cuba on March 28, 2026.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Two ships moving through the Atlantic Ocean have caught the attention of maritime intelligence companies and geostrategists across the world. The Anatoly Kolodkin, owned by the Russian government and carrying an estimated 7,30,000 barrels of crude oil, is heading towards energy-starved Cuba in clear defiance of Donald Trump’s illegal energy blockade of the socialist island-nation. Shipping tracker firm Kpler reported that the Kolodkin could reach Cuba as early as Monday (March 23, 2026).

It would not be the first tanker attempting to bring Russian fuel to Cuba in recent weeks. The Sea Horse, loaded with 2,00,000 barrels of gas oil believed to be from Russia but owned by a Chinese firm, was headed to Cuba before it abruptly halted in the middle of the Atlantic last month — likely fearing consequences from the U.S. government. If the Russian ships arrive, defying the U.S. blockade, they will be Cuba’s first energy shipments in three months.

Even so, the relief would be temporary. The 7,30,000 barrels of crude can produce diesel, gasoline, and jet fuel, while also helping power the electric grid, Jorge Piñón, a former oil executive who studies Cuba’s energy at the University of Texas, told The New York Times. But the crude would first need to be refined, and Cuba’s refineries are highly inefficient, meaning it would likely take several weeks and waste oil in the process. The Russian shipment, Mr. Piñón said, would give Cuba “breathing room of no more than 30 days”.

The morning after Mr. Trump’s comments about “taking” Cuba earlier this week, Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman, told reporters that Russia was in close contact with Cuba about its energy crisis and was “ready to provide all possible assistance.” Cuba, he added, is “an independent sovereign state that faces major economic difficulties due to the suffocating embargo imposed on the country.”

Russia’s help would be a massive succour to a desperate Cuba. The country’s entire electricity grid collapsed this week, leaving about 10 million people without power. Although the government managed to partially restore supply to parts of Havana, the consequences have been disastrous for ordinary Cubans. A report from the ground in Havana by The Guardian indicated that there are few cars on the roads, most airlines serving the island have suspended flights, the Canadian company Sherritt International has shuttered nickel mining operations in Cuba, state offices have closed, and schools have partly suspended classes. Many, the newspaper reported, are struggling with spoiled food, stifling heat, and sleepless children.

Cuba’s dependence on oil is structural: it accounts for 83% of total power generation, while oil products make up 56% of total energy consumption by industry, transport, agriculture, and households. For a country that imports roughly 80% of its food, prolonged blackouts are catastrophic as they interrupt refrigeration vital for preserving perishables. The archaic power network has been partially collapsing regularly since October 2024, with three national grid failures in the past four months alone.

None of this has deterred the Trump administration which continues to pursue criminally illegal actions. On January 29, Mr. Trump signed an executive order threatening punitive tariffs on any country selling oil to Cuba. This week, he went further, explicitly threatening to “take” the island. Cuba’s fuel supplies had been highly dependent on Venezuelan oil under the oil-for-doctors scheme instituted by Hugo Chavez. In 2022, Venezuela supplied 75% of Cuba’s oil imports; by 2023, this had dropped to 58% as Mexico emerged as a key supplier with 31%. Venezuela’s supply fell from 46,500 barrels per day in December 2025 to zero following Nicolas Maduro’s abduction in early January. After the January 29 order, Mexico also halted shipments.

Six decades of coercion

The current crisis is also the culmination of six decades of U.S. economic coercion. What Cubans call the “blockade” began in 1962 following the Cuban Revolution and nationalisation of industries. The embargo was reinforced in 1992 by the Torricelli Act, which prohibited foreign subsidiaries of U.S. firms from trading with Cuba and barred ships that had docked in Cuba from entering U.S. ports for 180 days. The 1996 Helms-Burton Act codified the embargo into law, extended sanctions to foreign companies doing business in Cuba, and allowed U.S. citizens to sue foreign investors using confiscated American property. The first Trump administration redesignated Cuba as a “State Sponsor of Terrorism” in January 2021, days before leaving office, deepening its financial exclusion from world trade. Cuban authorities have documented over 1,000 instances of foreign banks refusing services between 2021 and 2024.

In the second Trump administration, U.S. policy towards Cuba is fronted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants who left Cuba in 1956. Mr. Rubio grew up immersed in Miami’s Cuban émigré community, where deep hostility towards the socialist government has remained a powerful force. He has openly called for regime change in Havana. “This is our hemisphere,” Mr. Rubio declared on X after the Venezuela operation.

Talks and pressure

Cuba recently admitted it was in discussions with Washington D.C. and appears willing to make some economic changes. Shortly before Mr. Trump’s latest threat, Óscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga, the deputy Prime Minister, said Cuba was open to expatriate Cubans and foreign companies doing business on the island. “We’re not just talking about small enterprise, but also the possibility of being able to participate in key sectors of our development,” he told NBC.

But Mr. Rubio said the proposed changes did not go far enough and hinted at further pressure. “What they announced yesterday is not dramatic enough. It’s not going to fix it. So we’ve got some big decisions to make,” he said. The New York Times reported that U.S. negotiators were demanding the resignation of President Miguel Díaz-Canel.

Cuba has faced and overcome severe economic crises before. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, which provided subsidies averaging $4.3 billion annually, the island went through what it termed the “Special Period” through the 1990s. GDP fell by 35% between 1989 and 1993 and Cubans faced severe food shortages. The government responded with partial liberalisation, allowing small businesses and decriminalising the circulation of U.S. dollars. More recently, it has permitted micro, small and medium enterprises. But these reforms have proved insufficient against the combined weight of the embargo and subsequent sanctions.

This crisis may be more severe still. The Special Period eventually saw Venezuela emerge as an economic lifeline under Chávez. Today, that lifeline has been severed by U.S. military action, and the executive order explicitly threatens any government contemplating humanitarian relief.

While much of the world’s attention, including India’s, has been focused on the energy crisis triggered by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz — precipitated by U.S. and Israel’s illegal actions on Iran — Cuba faces a more deliberate form of strangulation. The Hormuz crisis is a consequence of regional conflict spurred by U.S. actions while Cuba’s is the intended outcome of a targeted U.S. policy designed to choke an entire nation into submission.

The Cuban government has remained defiant even as it negotiates. President Díaz-Canel responded that the U.S. government wants “to take over the country, its resources, its properties, and even the very economy they seek to suffocate in order to force us to surrender.” He added: “Faced with the worst-case scenario, Cuba is guided by one certainty: any external aggressor will face unyielding resistance.” Whether that resistance can outlast the blackouts and mounting desperation of ordinary Cubans and whether international support like the Russian fuel shipments will arrive in time remains to be seen.

Published – March 21, 2026 06:34 pm IST