Another tanker is being prepared

Russia says it will send a second ship carrying oil to Cuba, extending its support for the island as it struggles through a worsening energy crisis and a US trade and fuel squeeze.

Russian Energy Minister Sergei Tsivilev said on Thursday that the cargo was already being loaded and would be delivered to Cuba.

“Cuba is in a total blockade; it’s been cut off. Whose shipment of oil made it? A Russian vessel broke through the blockade,” Tsivilev said, referring to the first Russian tanker that arrived earlier this week.

“A second one is being loaded right now. We will not leave Cubans alone in trouble.”

First delivery arrived this week

The announcement came only days after a Russian-flagged tanker carrying about 700,000 barrels of crude docked at Cuba’s Matanzas oil terminal on Tuesday. It was the first major oil delivery to the country in roughly three months.

The Trump administration has imposed a fuel blockade on Cuba, but it granted a waiver for this week’s shipment on humanitarian grounds. Washington has said future decisions will be made case by case. A bureaucratic phrase, naturally, because apparently even oil now needs an appointment.

Cuba has been dealing with weeks of blackouts, fuel rationing and food shortages after the Trump administration earlier this year threatened tariffs on any country that sold or supplied oil to the island.

Cuban officials have called the embargo “cruel.”

Protests in Havana

The pressure has also shown up on the streets. On Thursday in Havana, hundreds of people on bicycles, motorcycles and small three-wheeled vehicles joined a protest against the US embargo.

Along the city’s famous seawall, the crowd shouted, “Yes to Cuba! No to the blockade!” as it passed the US Embassy and headed toward downtown.

“They are strangling us,” Ivan Beltran, 62, told AFP while riding an electric tricycle with a picture of Fidel Castro on the windshield.

Moscow and Havana widen talks

During an official visit to St Petersburg on Wednesday, Cuban Deputy Prime Minister Oscar Perez-Oliva told Russian broadcaster RT that Havana and Moscow “have begun efforts to achieve stability in fuel supplies.”

He also said the two countries had made progress in talks to increase the role of Russian companies in oil exploration and production in Cuba.

Trump downplays the shipments

Trump, who has repeatedly threatened to attack Cuba and remove its government, said on Sunday that he had “no problem” with Russia sending oil to the island.

“Cuba’s finished. They have a bad regime. They have very bad and corrupt leadership, and whether or not they get a boat of oil, it’s not going to matter,” Trump said.