With a Russian tanker loaded with crude oil nearing Cuba, President Donald Trump said late Sunday he would not enforce his effective blockade against fuel supplies to the island.
“If a country wants to send some oil into Cuba right now, I have no problem, whether it’s Russia … and if other countries want to do it,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One as he returned to Washington from a weekend at his Mar-a-Lago home.
“It’s not going to have an impact,” Trump said. “Cuba’s finished … whether or not they get a boat of oil, it’s not going to matter.”
The approach of the Russian-owned tanker Anatoly Kolodkin over the weekend set up a test of the Trump administration’s will to block fuel for Cuba — and how far the Kremlin is willing to go to help its longtime ally 90 miles from U.S. territory.
The vessel departed March 8 from Primorsk, Russia, carrying nearly 730,000 barrels of crude oil, according to TankerTrackers.com, an independent oil-tracking firm that measures how high a vessel is above sea level to determine its load. Britain’s Royal Navy tracked the ship and its Russian naval escort through the English Channel. Then the escort veered off and the vessel continued its journey solo.
By late Sunday, it was about 20 miles off the Cuban coast, according to ship tracking data. It was expected to reach the Matanzas oil storage facility early Tuesday, according to the global intelligence company Kpler.
Its cargo could then be processed at one of Cuba’s three refineries, located in Havana, Cienfuegos and Santiago. Once refined, that amount could help power the country’s aging energy grid for “no more than a few weeks,” according to Jorge Piñon, a researcher at the University of Texas at Austin Energy Institute.
Trump has declared that he expects Cuba’s communist government to fall, due to U.S. economic strangulation rather than military action, within a matter of weeks. He has said he will devote his attention to achieving that goal as soon as he finishes the war in Iran.
Critics of the oil blockade and experts in international law have said the effective blockade it is a violation of Cuban sovereignty under international law and of international humanitarian law provisions that prohibit such actions against civilians. Trump seemed to acknowledge the deprivation Sunday, saying that “the people need heat and cooling and all the other things that you need.”
In an executive order issued Jan. 30, Trump declared Cuba an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to U.S. national security and said he would impose tariffs on all U.S. imports from any country that supplies the nation with oil.
Trump had already stopped oil exports from Venezuela, long Cuba’s main supplier, following the U.S. military capture of Venezuelan strongman in January. The sanctions threat led Mexico and others from sending planned deliveries. Amid shortages of diesel and gasoline, Cuba has suffered island-wide blackouts and the closures of schools and hospitals.
The U.S. Embassy in Havana has also been affected. Employees have gathered in group houses and are working remotely, and nonessential personnel could soon be sent home.
The U.S. Treasury Department, looking to ease the surge in energy prices caused by the war in Iran, temporarily lifted sanctions this month on countries that purchased Russian oil then already at sea. But Treasury later issued new guidance that specifically barred Cuba from receiving Russian oil.
Before Venezuela, Russia was a prime supplier to Cuba. While Moscow’s relationship with Havana has ebbed, Russian Energy Minister Sergei Tsivilev said last week that “we have humanitarian support underway” including fuel supplies, as “Cuba has found itself in a hard situation as a result of sanction pressure.”
The Trump administration was limited in what it could legally do to stop the tanker from reaching Cuba, although previous challenges to its activities in the Caribbean have so far not succeeded.
Late last year, Trump launched a campaign to seize sanctioned vessels near Venezuela, part of an effort to pressure the government of Nicolás Maduro. While some of the vessels were boarded and taken over as “stateless” under international law and others were under U.S. terrorist designations or sanctions against any U.S. persons or entities involved with them, none of those measures appear to apply to the Kolodkin.
Without them, “the legal authority to rush out and grab stuff outside the territory of the United States is relatively limited,” said Jeremy Paner, a former lead investigator and analyst for OFAC who now specializes in sanctions and export controls at the international law firm Hughes Hubbard and Reed.
Brett Erickson, Managing Principal of Obsidian Risk Advisors, said the U.S. decision not to interdict the Kolodkin — itself under pre-Trump sanctions imposed against Russia over Ukraine — would likely embolden Moscow. He said Washington may have decided that in the midst of a war with Iran, it could not risk a confrontation with Moscow over Cuba.
“Seizing or boarding a Russian vessel while simultaneously managing an active military conflict in Iran would pour fuel on already volatile energy markets,” Erickson said. “The geopolitical cost of direct confrontation with Russia right now may simply be a step further than Washington is willing to take. This is the downstream consequence of a scattershot foreign policy, when you’re overextended on every front, you lose the ability to enforce on any of them.”
“The Anatoly will not be the last” shipment of Russian oil to Cuba, he predicted.
It is unclear whether Trump’s objective with his Cuba policy is the complete removal of the government or changes in its centralized economy that would allow more private and foreign investment. Even before its current difficulties, ongoing economic problems had led to a massive surge in Cuban migrants to the United States. Those numbers have now declined to near zero as Trump has canceled protected status for Cuban immigrants, leavening many newly illegal entrants open to arrest and deportation.
“Cuba will be next … in a short amount of time” after the Iran war, Trump said Sunday. “Cuba is a mess … It’s going to fail and we will be there to help it out,” he said. “We’ll be there to help our great Cuban Americans who were thrown out of Cuba,” when Fidel Castro led his revolution to power in 1959.
Cuban Americans, a key voting block in red Florida, have objected to diplomatic outreach to the Cuban government. As Trump was returning Sunday night from a weekend at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, supporters along the route to the airport held up signs reading “Make Cuba Great Again.”
Washington and Havana have acknowledged they have begun a process of bilateral negotiations, but there’s little indication the talks have expanded beyond agenda-setting, according to officials in both countries.
Meg Kelly contributed to this report.
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