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Miguel Díaz-Canel granted an exclusive interview on Friday to RT during the V International Conference Homeland of Digital Communication, held in Havana, in which he stated that Cuba has a people ready to fight against any external aggression.
The statement occurs in the context of a sustained campaign of combative rhetoric that the leader has intensified since January 2026, when the capture of the Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro by U.S. forces cut off the main oil supply to the island and worsened the already critical economic situation of the country.
Díaz-Canel recalled in the interview the 32 Cuban military personnel from the FAR and MININT who died in Venezuela on January 3 while defending Maduro, presenting them as a symbol of the combative spirit of the Cuban people.
"And if 32 Cuban fighters fell in Venezuela defending the president of that nation, what wouldn’t millions of Cubans do by that same example, fighting to save the revolution and defend Cuban soil," he stated.
The leader rejected the comparison between Cuba and Venezuela, arguing that the Island has its own history of over six decades resisting external pressures. "I never like it when we are compared to the realities of another country, firstly because it fails to acknowledge the unique history [of your country]," he noted.
"Cuba is a nation that has been blocked for over 60 years, enduring aggression; we have always been attacked," he stated. "We have survived, we have resisted those aggressions, and we have even managed to make progress, although we have not yet reached everything we have dreamed of and everything we have wanted," he added.
Regarding the anticipated institutional changes, Díaz-Canel announced that before mid-2026, there will be a reduction in the number of ministries and legal modifications to decrease bureaucracy. "We are also considering a resizing of the entire state, administrative, and business apparatus, that is, reducing bureaucracy," he stated, aiming for "flatter and more efficient structures."
This interview with RT is part of a series of international appearances by the leader: on April 7, he was featured on the cover of Newsweek with the headline "WE WILL FIGHT BACK," following his first appearance of a Cuban leader on U.S. television since 1959, and he has reiterated in various forums that Cuba is not a failed state, but rather a besieged state.
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