Miguel Diaz-Canel said Thursday he would not resign under U.S. pressure, telling an American broadcaster in his first television interview with a U.S. outlet that Cuba is a sovereign state and that Washington has no right to demand anything from Havana.
The 65-year-old Cuban president said, “We have a free sovereign state, a free state. We have self-determination and independence, and we are not subjected to the designs of the United States.” He added that the U.S. government “has no moral right to demand anything from Cuba,” and said, “The concept of revolutionaries giving up and stepping down – it’s not part of our vocabulary.”
His remarks came as Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov visited Cuba on Thursday and held talks with Diaz-Canel, underscoring how tightly Havana is leaning on Moscow as its energy crisis deepens. Ryabkov said Russia had “no plans to walk away from the western hemisphere” and added, “We cannot betray Cuba. That is out of the question. We cannot leave it on its own.”
Cuba has been in an energy crisis since January, after it stopped receiving key Venezuelan oil shipments when the U.S. attacked Venezuela and arrested Maduro. In late March, the tanker Anatoly Kolodkin delivered 730,000 barrels of crude oil to Cuba, the island’s first oil delivery in three months. Cuba produces only 40% of the fuel it consumes.
The contrast is stark: Washington is tightening pressure on communist-ruled Cuba, including threats of tariffs on countries that sell oil to the island, while Russia is signaling more support. Ryabkov said it was “too early to say what the next steps will be,” but added that Moscow would not limit its supplies to the load carried by the Anatoly Kolodkin.
Trump has openly floated the idea of taking Cuba and called it finished, saying, “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.” Diaz-Canel’s answer on Thursday was blunt: Havana is not backing down, and Moscow is not leaving it alone.