The United States Ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz, reaffirmed on Tuesday Washington's support for the Cuban people and denounced the regime's strategy of portraying itself as a victim before the United Nations, in an interview on the Fox & Friends program where he summarized the conclusions of the forum held the day before at the UN headquarters in New York.
His statements came after the forum "Cuba Libre: The Oppression That Havana Hides," held on Monday by the U.S. Permanent Mission to the UN, which brought together Cuban political prisoners to denounce the repression of the regime to the international diplomatic community.
"Cuba loves to play the victim at the UN, while its communist leaders live in luxury and their people suffer in darkness. The United States stands with the Cuban people and their dreams of freedom and prosperity," Waltz wrote on his X social media account while sharing the television segment.
In the interview, the ambassador was straightforward: "Every year, the regime comes here and plays the victim. They introduce resolutions about a supposed blockade against Cuba. There is no blockade. There is no ring of warships."
Waltz denounced the gap between the lives of Cuban officials and the reality of the people: "People are dying of hunger, there are blackouts, but regime officials live in luxury in Europe and Latin America. There is no fuel on the island, but there is for their private jets and residences."
One of his most compelling accusations targeted the regime's priorities in energy matters: "There is electricity in the Cuban and Chinese intelligence facilities, but not in the hospitals."
The Monday forum featured testimonies from figures such as José Daniel Ferrer, former president of UNPACU, who stated that he spent more than 12 years in Cuban prisons—over nine of which were in isolation—and denounced that regime officials offered to suspend his sentence in exchange for public support of the government.
Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, an artist and activist who was released after five years in prison and sent into exile in July 2026, also participated, alongside researcher María Werlau, analyst Emilio Morales, Republican Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis, and the representative of Ukraine to the UN, Volodimir Pavlichenko.
The regime's response was swift. Cuban diplomats staged a repudiation act in the halls of the UN, shouting "terrorists" and "get out of the UN" at the panelists. Waltz described what happened: "We witnessed the shouting, the screams. We saw officials from the Cuban regime trying to intimidate and film those people as they left our forum."
The Cuban ambassador to the UN, Ernesto Soberón Guzmán, had described the event as a "political motivation maneuver" and attempted to prevent it by invoking internal regulations of the organization. Waltz responded to him that if the Cuban government was bothered by the accusations, it should "stop repressing".
The ambassador also emphasized Washington's shift in stance within the multilateral organization: "The UN was like its fiefdom. Not anymore, not with this administration. We are rejecting this propaganda."
The forum and Waltz's statements come just days before the annual General Assembly vote on the resolution calling for an end to the U.S. embargo on Cuba, scheduled for October 27 and 28.
In 2025, that resolution received 165 votes in favor, the lowest level in over a decade, compared to 187 in 2024, and in July 2026 it only garnered 136 votes to initiate an extraordinary debate — a sign of the regime's increasing diplomatic isolation.
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