President Donald Trump announced on Sunday that his administration will allow the arrival of the Russian tanker Anatoly Kolodkin in Cuba, a sanctioned vessel carrying between 700,000 and 730,000 barrels of crude oil, marking a shift in the maximum energy pressure policy that Washington had imposed on the island since January.
When asked by a journalist aboard Air Force One, Trump replied candidly: If a country wants to send some oil to Cuba, I have no problem with that."
The statement goes beyond the specific case of Kolodkin: the president has extended the permissiveness to any origin, which in practice lifts the oil blockade that he himself had established through the Executive Order 14380, signed on January 29th.
Trump justified the decision with a humanitarian argument: "I prefer to let him in, whether he’s from Russia or any other country, because people need heating, cooling, and all the other things you need."
When a journalist asked him if he was concerned that the measure would benefit Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump dismissed it: "It doesn't help him. He's losing an oil ship. That's all it is. It doesn't bother me."
At the same time, the official was emphatic about the future of the regime: "Cuba is finished. They have a bad regime. They have very poor and corrupt leadership. And whether or not they receive an oil tanker, it won't matter."
The U.S. Coast Guard, which had at least two vessels deployed north of Cuba, received instructions not to intercept the tanker, according to sources cited by The New York Times.
Anatoly Kolodkin, sanctioned by the United States, the European Union, and the United Kingdom, departed from the Russian port of Primorsk on March 8 with a fictitious declared destination and docked this Monday at the port of Matanzas, as confirmed by the Russian Ministry of Transport.
According to journalist specialized in the State Department Eric Martin, the authorization was not unilateral: Washington reportedly greenlighted Russian crude only after Havana permitted the supply of fuel for the generators of the United States embassy in Havana, which had been without fuel access for weeks.
The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, confirmed that the matter had been communicated to Washington in advance: "This issue was raised beforehand during contacts with our American partners."
The relief that the shipment will bring will be limited and temporary.
The expert Jorge Piñón from the University of Texas estimates that it covers at most two weeks of supply for Cuba, which produces only 40,000 barrels daily when it needs 110,000.
The energy crisis stemming from the blockade has caused blackouts affecting up to 64% of the country, with generation deficits exceeding 2,000 MW and outages lasting up to 25 hours a day.
Trump also reaffirmed this Sunday his forecast regarding the collapse of the regime and the role Washington will play: "In no time, it will fail, and we will be there to help it."
Peskov, for his part, anticipated that Moscow will not stand still: "In the desperate situation in which the Cubans find themselves now, this cannot leave us indifferent, so we will continue to work on this."
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