Open this photo in gallery:
Installers lift a solar panel onto the rooftop of a multi-family building in Matanzas, Cuba, on Monday.STRINGER/AFP/Getty Images
Russia will continue helping fuel-hungry Cuba with crucial supplies of oil, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday, two weeks after Moscow sent a tanker with around 700,000 barrels of crude to the Caribbean island.
Washington stopped oil exports to Cuba from its main ally Venezuela after capturing Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Jan. 3, triggering acute fuel shortages across the communist-ruled island of almost 11 million people.
President Donald Trump has threatened punishing tariffs on countries sending crude to Cuba as he seeks to put pressure on the government. The U.S. later allowed the Russian oil delivery to Cuba, this year’s first by Moscow, for humanitarian reasons.
Opinion: America’s efforts to topple the Cuban regime have lost the plot
In a small town on the edge of the vast Zapata Swamp, one of Cuba’s top eco-tourism destinations, plunging visitor numbers are adding to the struggles of residents and tourism industry workers, as an energy blockade by the United States leaves the island with worsening fuel and power shortages.
Reuters
Another major supplier, Mexico, halted its shipments.
Lavrov, on a visit to China, said Russia will provide humanitarian aid to Cuba, its long-standing ally.
“We have dispatched the first tanker with 100,000 tons (700,000 barrels) of oil for Cuba. Of course, this will probably last for a couple of months – I’m not a specialist,” he told a briefing at the end of the two-day visit.
Fuel shortages and power cuts deal blow to Cuba’s top tourist destinations
“But I have no doubt that we will continue providing such assistance, and that (China) will, of course, continue to take part in this co-operation as well,” added Lavrov, without referring to the issue of U.S. permission or not for future deliveries.
Cuba produces less than a third of the oil it requires. Though it cleared the recent Russian delivery, the Trump administration said it would review further oil shipments to Cuba on a “case-by-case” basis.
