Russian Oil Arrives, But Blockade Continues
April 6, 2026
The U.S. oil blockade on Cuba was broken this week when Russian tanker Anatoly Kolodkin reached the island Tuesday with more than 700,000 barrels of oil, the first shipment in three months to reach the island.
"We have a tanker out there. We don't mind having somebody get a boatload because they need...they have to survive," U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.
Russia’s Energy Minister Sergei Tsivilyov said Thursday that Russia is preparing to send a second tanker.
While the blockade may have loosened, the U.S. government’s economic war on Cuba shows no sign of relenting.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday that the U.S. would handle Cuba fuel deliveries “on a case-by-case basis.” She also made it clear that the Russian tanker's arrival did not represent a “firm change in our sanctions policy.”
Politico reported that Cuba is being given a “a longer lifeline” because the Trump administration’s resources and attention are being consumed by the war against Iran. Politico's source was “a person familiar with the administration’s conversations on Cuba."
Boost Private Businesses, Starve the Public Sector
It will take weeks for Cuba to refine all the Russian oil.
Meanwhile, Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum said Monday that her country may renew oil exports to Cuba but suggested they could be limited to the private sector. Last year, Mexico sent more oil to Cuba than any other country. Deliveries abruptly ceased in January due to U.S. pressure.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has been allowing fuel exports to private businesses — not to the state.
While Cuba’s growing private sector plays an increasingly important role in the economy, the public sector continues to provide the majority of essential services.
It is the public sector that mobilizes evacuations and provides shelter during hurricanes, runs mass transportation, collects garbage, carries out burials and operates mosquito-control campaigns. It subsidizes access to sports and cultural events, as well as housing, electricity, gas and food. It also develops and produces medications and vaccines — provided free or at highly subsidized prices — and maintains a system of universal, free public healthcare.
As the Trump administration seeks to bolster the private sector while it starves the Cuban government of resources, the results can be seen most devastatingly in the country’s hospitals.
Belly of the Beast’s Liz Oliva Fernández and Drop Site’s Ryan Grim recently visited the William Soler Pediatric Hospital in Havana where they spoke with the chief anesthesiologist, Alioth Fernández Valle, and the parents of some of his patients. Watch a video of their visit.
Alioth Fernández and other doctors at William Soler spoke about how the nurses have to rush to hand-pump the ventilators when the power goes out and before the generator turns on.
“It's agonizing because you don't know when it's coming back,” said Fernández. “When you have multiple ventilated patients, it becomes even more desperate because…the staff sometimes can't keep up with the number of patients who need attention.”
Daily Triage
The power outages are just the latest crisis. Fernández and his colleagues have been contending with chronic shortages of medicine and medical equipment since Cuba emerged from Covid-19, when U.S. government “maximum pressure” sanctions began to bite.
These sanctions have locked Cuba out of most of the international banking system. They have made U.S. and European pharmaceutical and medical equipment companies take fright, so that often, even when Cuba has the money to pay for items sick children need, it’s almost impossible to buy them. Most importantly, they cost Cuba billions of dollars a year, which has forced the state to slash its budget for imports and domestic production of medicine, medical equipment and supplies.
When every dollar has to be stretched paper thin across an entire population, children like nine-year-old Carlos Rodríguez Cueto pay the price. Carlos has cystic fibrosis, but the medication he needs — Trikafta — costs upwards of $300,000 per patient per year.
"It's not that the doctors don't want to help," his mother says. "It's that they can't."
Historically, Cuba's Health Ministry has devoted significant resources to saving individual lives — providing intensive care, complex surgeries, long-term treatment and expensive medications free of charge.
The government spends about 20% of its budget on health, about twice the global average. But after eight years of intensified economic warfare waged by the first Trump administration, Biden and now Trump again, the Cuban government’s coffers have been drained and the health system is buckling.
Increasingly, Cuban doctors and nurses are forced to practice triage.
“When you have $100, you have to think about how many people those $100 can help,” said Fernández. “And so sometimes, children with very specific conditions get left behind.”