Russian oil tanker docks in Cuba after US blockade relief

• The tanker Anatoly Kolodkin docked at Matanzas with 730,000 barrels of crude, marking the first shipment since January after President Trump granted a "case-by-case" humanitarian waiver to the ongoing fuel blockade.
• While the White House maintains it is driving the Cuban system "to the brink" to force concessions, experts warn this shipment provides only about two weeks of diesel—insufficient to resolve the structural blackouts and food shortages currently paralyzing the island.

A Russian oil tanker docked in a Cuban port on Tuesday to deliver the first crude shipment to the island since January after Washington gave the crisis-hit country a reprieve from a fuel blockade.

The Anatoly Kolodkin, a tanker under US sanctions, entered the port of Matanzas, east of Havana, after sunrise to deliver 730,000 barrels of crude, AFP journalists said.

US President Donald Trump's decision to let Russia deliver the oil avoids a confrontation with Moscow and provides temporary relief to a country that has endured blackouts, fuel rationing and dwindling public transportation.

Analysts, however, said the shipment would only give Cuba a brief respite.

"It can offer temporary breathing room, but it does not come close to resolving the scale of the deficit the country is facing," Ricardo Torres, a Cuban economist at American University in Washington, told AFP.

"It is clearly not enough," he said, noting that Cuba's power problems are "structural rather than episodic."

Cuban Energy and Mining Minister Vicente de la O Levy thanked Russia for the support, saying on X that the "valuable shipment arrives in the middle of the complex energy situation that we are facing."

Trump, who has mused about "taking" communist-ruled Cuba, said Sunday that he did not object to Russia or others sending oil to the island because Cubans "have to survive."

The White House denied that there was any change to US sanctions policy.

"We allowed this ship to reach Cuba in order to provide humanitarian needs to the Cuban people. These decisions are being made on a case-by-case basis," White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said.

Driving Cuba “to the brink”

Cuba was cut off from oil supplies in January after US forces abducted its main regional ally, Venezuela's socialist leader Nicolas Maduro, and Trump threatened tariffs on countries that send crude to the country.

While Trump has warned that "Cuba is next," President Miguel Diaz-Canel confirmed in March that Cuban and US officials had held talks.

Ricardo Herrero, executive director of the Cuba Study Group, a nonpartisan policy group in Washington, said the aim of restricting oil was to force Havana "to make real concessions at the negotiating table."

"The strategy here is to drive the system to the brink," Herrero told AFP. "But it's not to precipitate a full-blown societal or humanitarian collapse."

"It's all consistent with idea that the US holds all the cards and they'll decide when to hold, when to fold and when they go all in," he said.

Two weeks of diesel

Cubans have endured seven nationwide blackouts since 2024, including two in March, and fuel prices have soared.

The blackouts as well as persistent shortages of food and medicine have fueled public frustration and some rare protests.

Experts said the Russian oil would buy the Cuban economy only a few weeks.

Jorge Pinon, an expert on Cuba's energy sector at the University of Texas at Austin, said the more urgent need is diesel, which could be used for backup power generators or for transportation systems to keep the economy running.

It would take a month to refine the oil and deliver the diesel, which would be enough to cover demand for about two weeks, he said.

Herrero said the shipment was just "another donation" by Cuba's Russian ally, but he doubted that Moscow wanted to subsidize the Cuban economy in the long term.

"This is not going to help the economy recover," he said. "This is just humanitarian aid."