US hits Cuba with new sanctions as island's crises multiply

Havana: The US government on Thursday slapped new sanctions on Cuba in a fresh push to strangle the island's economy and deepen its multiple crises.

Among those hit with sanctions are Fidel Ernesto Castro, grandson of former President Raul Castro, and Cuba's Oil Industry Supply Import Company, known as Abapet. The company is responsible for importing special equipment and spare parts needed to sustain Cuba's crumbling power grid.

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The sanctions aim to push Cuba's critical machinery offline and exacerbate its energy crisis, said Brett Erickson, a sanctions expert and managing principal at Obsidian Risk Advisors, a consulting firm.

"The US is trying to really tighten the screws as much as possible," he said.

"The Trump administration seems to have no seriousness to accept any change from Cuba other than a toppling of regime. Marco is not going to let that go," he added, referring to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

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Erickson anticipated that Cuba's government would try to circumvent the sanctions "because they have to."

"They'll get creative in how they try to procure these maintenance parts," he said, warning it would be a costlier alternative, which in turn would raise inflation and further hurt Cuba's economy.

Islandwide blackouts have become increasingly common, while daily outages in Cuba now surpass 24 hours as the aging grid fails and fuel reserves dwindle ever since US President Donald Trump in late January threatened tariffs on any country that sells or provides oil to the island.

"The goal in theory is to create so much civilian hardship and suffering that they have no option but to essentially rise up and topple their government," Erickson said. "It is an attempt to cause a humanitarian crisis."

Talks earlier this year between the US and Cuba have since halted, while sanctions have increased in recent months.

Erickson said he expects the US to keep targeting smaller and smaller state companies to try and push them "into a death spiral." The US has previously sanctioned entities including Cuba's state-owned oil and gas company.

The US State Department made the announcement just hours after Cuban officials held a press conference to share more details on the historic economic reforms approved in June.

When asked about the current situation in Cuba, Oscar Perez-Oliva Fraga, Cuba's deputy prime minister and minister of foreign investment, blamed the US government.

"This past year has been very complex, and we know why," he said. "The blockade is a genocide."

He spoke before the sanctions were announced.

Among the Cubans exhausted by the ongoing outages is 49-year-old Yaqueline Bernal. She said Thursday that she hasn't had electricity since Sunday and worries most about the consequences for her eight young grandchildren.

"If we don't have power, we don't have water," she said. "You really don't know what's going to happen to you."

Bruno Rodriguez, Cuba's foreign affairs minister, decried the latest sanctions on X.

"Collective punishment is a crime. So, too, is inflicting suffering on an entire population through measures coldly calculated to trigger a humanitarian crisis," he said. "Enough with the abuse. Put an end to the blockade once and for all and allow Cuba to live in peace."

Eugenio Martinez Enriquez, Cuba's ambassador in Mexico, called Rubio "a liar without scruples."

"We will not forget his crimes," he wrote on X.

Meanwhile, Rubio asserted on X that those sanctioned "are part of the corrupt Castro financial and intelligence network."

"Cuba's Communist regime elites preside over a failed state where ordinary Cubans go hungry while the Castro family and other insiders enrich themselves through sanctions evasion and other illicit schemes - and seek to export subversive Marxist ideology to the United States and other states in the Western Hemisphere," he wrote.

"Trump and I are unwavering in our commitment that Cuba will be free."