President Donald Trump on Sunday warned that Cuba would no longer receive Venezuelan oil shipments, and urged the Communist government in Havana to make a deal.
“THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA — ZERO! I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social on Sunday.
“Cuba lived, for many years, on large amounts of OIL and MONEY from Venezuela,” Trump said, adding that Havana in return provided security services for Nicolás Maduro, who was arrested by US commandos on January 3, and his mentor and predecessor Hugo Chávez. “BUT NOT ANYMORE!”
The Cuban government is among those the Trump administration has warned in the wake of the US military operation to take Maduro, along with Greenland, Iran, Mexico and Colombia, though he abruptly softened his tone on Bogotá this week.
Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel responded in a combative series of posts on X, saying that Cuba “does not threaten — it prepares itself, ready to defend the homeland to the last drop of blood”.
“Those who today lash out hysterically against our nation do so consumed by rage at this people’s sovereign decision to choose their political model,” Díaz-Canel said.
Fidel Castro’s revolutionaries took power in 1959 and two years later declared a Communist government which has ruled ever since. Havana has long provided its ideological allies in Caracas with security support in exchange for heavily discounted oil.
But that relationship is under strain as Washington seeks to control Venezuela’s oil sector and cut off a lifeline to Cuba, which relies on imported crude to fuel its power plants.
The country is mired in a severe economic crisis, with tourist numbers falling, foreign exchange scarce and blackouts a near-daily occurrence.
At a meeting at the White House between Trump and top oil executives on Friday, the US president said that “Cuba’s in bad shape” and that “nobody really knows what’s going to happen” to the Caribbean nation without Venezuela’s oil and funding.
Trump said last weekend that the US would not need to take military action against Cuba because it is “ready to fall” and “it looks like it’s going down”.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio said on Friday that Cuban leadership has “a choice to make” between having “a real country with a real economy” or “systemic and societal collapse”.
Rubio added that “we don’t have an interest in a destabilised Cuba, but that would be their fault”.
Cuban foreign minister Bruno Rodríguez said that the country “does not receive, nor has it ever received, monetary or material compensation” for the security services it provides to other countries.
“Cuba has the absolute right to import fuel from markets willing to export it, without interference from the United States’ unilateral coercive measures,” Rodríguez said.
Thirty-two of Maduro’s Cuban bodyguards were killed in the raid that led to Maduro’s capture, highlighting Havana’s penetration of security systems in Caracas.
Delcy Rodríguez, Venezuela’s interim president who has received Trump’s backing to help “run” Venezuela and open it up to US oil companies, paid tribute to the fallen Cubans during a ceremony at the Fuerte Tiuna military base in Caracas on Thursday, from which Maduro was extracted.
“They are heroes and heroines of this homeland,” Rodríguez said of the fallen Cubans, “because as one people they fought in defence against the illegal and illegitimate aggression”.
Last year, Mexico overtook Venezuela to become Cuba’s top oil supplier, as Maduro’s cash-strapped government sought to sell more of its crude on the black market, particularly to China via intermediaries.
Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum has defended Mexico’s oil shipments to Cuba, saying support for the island was long-standing and consisted of contracts and humanitarian aid.
Over the years, Havana has also provided Venezuela with brigades of doctors who bolstered the Chavista government’s populist health programmes, alongside political support. When Chávez was ailing from cancer before his death in 2013, he received treatment in Havana.
In 2002, when Chavez was briefly deposed during a putsch, it was a phone call from Castro that helped persuade him to stay on and fight. Relations with Havana deepened in the following decades.
In his Truth Social post, Trump said that Venezuela no longer needs protection “from the thugs and extortionists who held them hostage”, in reference to Cuba.
“Venezuela now has the United States of America, the most powerful military in the World (by far!), to protect them, and protect them we will,” Trump said.
Additional reporting by Jude Webber in Dublin