HAVANA — Miguel Diaz-Canel said in an interview with NBC News on Thursday that he will not step down, brushing off renewed U.S. pressure on his government as he cast Cuba as a country that answers to no foreign power.
“Stepping down is not part of our vocabulary,” Diaz-Canel said, adding that Cuba is a “free sovereign state” with the right to “self-determination” and is not “subject to the designs of the United States.” He also said that in Cuba, “the people who are in leadership positions are not elected by the US government.”
The remarks come as the Trump administration has increased pressure and demands for regime change on Cuba, with Trump saying last month, “I built this great military. I said, ‘You’ll never have to use it.’ But sometimes you have to use it. And Cuba is next.” Diaz-Canel, who has been president since 2018, condemned what he called a U.S. “hostile policy” that has left Cuba facing widespread power blackouts, fuel shortages and disruptions to water and food distribution.
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Cuba’s crisis deepened after Trump ousted Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro in January, cutting off the island’s main oil supply. The United States has also imposed an oil blockade on Cuba and threatened tariffs on any country that sells oil to the island, measures Diaz-Canel said have “deprived the American people from a normal relationship with Cuba.” Trump has labeled Cuba an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to U.S. national security and has threatened a “takeover” of the country.
The dispute is rooted in decades of hostility that began after the Cuban Revolution overthrew a U.S.-backed military government in the 1950s, and Washington imposed a comprehensive trade embargo by the early 1960s. Today’s pressure lands as Cuba faces one of the worst humanitarian crises in its history, and its reliance on outside support has made that confrontation more immediate.
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Russia remains one of Havana’s closest allies, and that support was underscored on Friday when Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said in Havana, “We cannot betray Cuba. That is out of the question. We cannot leave it on its own.” Last month, a Russia-flagged tanker carrying 730,000 barrels of oil docked in Cuba, the first to reach the island in three months.
For Diaz-Canel, the fight is no longer only about sovereignty in the abstract. It is about whether Cuba can keep the lights on, keep fuel moving and keep its government intact while Washington says the island is next.