The latest US oil restrictions will hit the “daily life of millions” of people, a former envoy has warned
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is using “crude lies” to justify Washington’s continued pressure on Cuba, the island nation’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla, has said following the latest round of American sanctions.
The US Department of State announced restrictions against the Cuban state oil and gas company, CUPET, on Thursday. Washington has stepped up its pressure campaign against the island nation in a bid to force a regime change, while US President Donald Trump called it a “question of time.”
Cuba, which has been under a US embargo since 1960, also endured daily blackouts and severe fuel deficits in recent months after Venezuela – its main oil supplier – stopped crude shipments under pressure from Washington.
On Thursday, the State Department added CUPET to the sanctions list, arguing that the company’s “key assets” were “unlawfully expropriated from American owners years ago.” Rubio also said in a statement that the Cuban government had “weaponized” the energy by allegedly “hoarding” it for the military while rationing it for the general population.
Parrilla hit back by calling Rubio’s words “the most aggressive, uncouth, and rabid [lies] among Cuba’s enemies.” The minister said in a post on X that the US Secretary of State is “driven by ambitions of conquest.”
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Rubio – himself a descendant of Cuban immigrants who left the island several years before the revolution led by Fidel Castro – is acting on “vengeful sentiments of the elitist clique that propelled his political career,” Parrilla stated.
A former Cuban ambassador to Argentina, Pedro Pablo Prada, also warned on X that the latest US sanctions would inevitably affect “fuel, electricity generation, transportation, production, and daily life of millions of Cubans.” Washington has made the island’s energy sector the main target of its “political and economic offensive,” the diplomat said.
On Wednesday, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk warned that the US sanctions on Cuba had already led to acute shortages of essential medical supplies that were causing deaths among children.
The UN official described the plight of ordinary Cubans as “unacceptable” as his office reported that infant mortality on the island had doubled after the US imposed its fuel blockage.
Russia, China, Mexico, and several other countries have been supplying Cuba with humanitarian aid. Moscow sent a shipment of around 700,000 barrels of crude oil in late March.
