Where Does Russia’s Just-in-Time Energy Lifeline Leave Cuba?

“We cannot be indifferent to the desperate situation that Cubans are experiencing today,” said Dmitry Peskov. 

Following weeks of anticipation, the Russian oil tanker Anatoly Kolodkin finally arrived in the Cuban port of Matanzas this Tuesday morning after breaking the Trump administration’s de facto energy blockade of the Caribbean island. The oil arrives as the deadly consequences of Washington’s energy embargo began to attract the attention of MSM outlets in the US.

The last time the Cuban government received oil imports was in early January, just before the US commandeered the oil supplies of Cuba’s biggest oil provider, Venezuela, after kidnapping President Maduro. Trump then signed Executive Order 14380, imposing harsh tariffs on any country caught “directly or indirectly” supplying oil to Cuba. The main target of that order was Cuba’s second largest supplier, Mexico, which promptly suspended all oil shipments to Havana.

Carrying 730,000 barrels of crude, the Anatoly Kolodkin is not only subject to EU, UK and US sanctions; it is also named after a prominent Russian lawyer who specialised in maritime law. I trust readers will appreciate the irony given the flagrant illegality of the Trump administration’s energy blockade of Cuba. From the Russian shipping company SCF’s website:

Anatoly Kolodkin (1928-2011) was an outstanding Russian lawyer specializing in maritime law, doctor of legal sciences, professor of Moscow State Law Academy, judge at the UN International Tribunal for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea (Hamburg), and member of the International Court of Justice (the Hague).

Anatoly Kolodkin dedicated most of his life to maritime transportation and international maritime law; becoming an established representative of the USSR, and then Russia, at various international organisations. Kolodkin’s scientific works in the field of  international maritime law have been published in many countries around the  world.

Anatoly Kolodkin is an Honoured Scientist of the Russian Federation and was awarded the Order of Honour and the Order of Friendship.

“We are pleased that this batch of petroleum derivatives has arrived on the island,” Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dimitry Peskov, said on Monday. The oil shipment was apparently discussed in advance with US officials. Peskov also suggested that Russia is considering sending more oil shipments to Cuba:

Russia considers it its duty not to stand aside and to provide the necessary help to Cuban friends… We cannot be indifferent to the desperate situation that Cubans are experiencing today.

The Western media have tried to sell the news in the most positive light imaginable for the West by portraying the tanker’s arrival as the result of a magnanimous act by Washington. The NYT was the first outlet to break the story (early Sunday afternoon, EST) in its piece (emphasis my own): U.S. Allows Russian Oil Tanker to Reach Cuba, Despite Blockade:

The US Coast Guard has allowed a Russian oil tanker loaded with crude oil to reach Cuba, supplying crucial energy to the island nation after a months-long de facto oil blockade imposed by the Trump administration.

The tanker, which carries about 730,000 barrels of oil and belongs to the Russian government, was just a few miles from Cuban territorial waters on Sunday night, according to MarineTraffic, a maritime data company. At its speed of 12 knots, the tanker could reach its planned destination in Matanzas, Cuba, on Monday night.

The arrival of the Russian ship could change the course of a rapidly accelerating crisis in Cuba, giving the island at least a few weeks of leeway before its fuel reserves are exhausted, analysts say.

In the hours that followed, just about every other Western media outlet parroted the same line — in an act of generosity, the Trump administration was “allowing” energy to finally reach Cuba:

The worst headline came from Spanish public broadcaster RTVE, which suggests that it was Washington itself that had broken Trump’s energy blockade on Cuba:

The US breaks the Cuban blockade and allows the arrival of a Russian oil tanker to the island.

Hours later, Trump himself appeared to endorse this grandiose narrative, telling reporters on Air Force One that he had given Russia — “and other countries” — the green light to send oil to Cuba. How long this will last and which “other countries” it applies to is anyone’s guess:

Cuba, Trump said, “needs to survive” — words that might be comforting if they weren’t coming from the lips of a man whose actions have already led to the deaths of an unknowable number of Cubans. From the New York Times‘ recent piece, “Cuban Patients Are Dying Because of U.S. Blockade, Doctors Say“:

The U.S. oil blockade on Cuba is fast exhausting the country’s supply of fuel, causing daily blackouts, food shortages, canceled classes and black-market gas prices approaching $40 a gallon. It is also crippling Cuba’s universal health care system, a state institution once considered a triumph for a poor nation, but is now struggling to provide basic care.

In interviews, six Cuban doctors said that rapidly deteriorating conditions at hospitals and clinics across Cuba were causing deaths that would otherwise be preventable.

“I can’t tell you how many deaths, but I’m sure there are more than in the same period last year,” said Dr. Alioth Fernandez, chief anesthesiologist at Havana’s largest pediatric hospital. “I see it in shift handovers, in colleagues’ comments and in children I’ve operated on.”

Trump then went on to reiterate his threat that Cuba will be “next” to fall. When that happens, he said, “we will be there to help it out“:

Needless to say, the new narrative framing, that the US is now letting oil tankers access Cuban ports, has a few flaws, most notably this one:

There are plenty of possible reasons why the US declined to enforce its de facto oil embargo on Cuba (five of which are explored in today’s cross-posted piece by Andrew Korybko). While we cannot know for sure which are the true reasons, it is hard not to see this latest policy reversal, however welcome it may be, as yet another instance of Trump chickening out.

Then again, the reversal could itself be swiftly reversed at any moment. As Fiorella Isabel points out that the arrival of the Anatoly Kolodkin, while most likely “not an act of defiance by Russia” but rather “a meditated and strategically pre-agreed move”, as hinted at by Peskov, nonetheless has potentially important implications.

Ultimately the people of Cuba will gain momentary respite which is needed. But this oil will last >3 weeks, a month tops. The UN has done nothing. If Trump’s serious, everyone who can should break the siege. But if this was just a deal with Moscow then Cuba will be left in peril again.

Russia is already emerging as one of the biggest beneficiaries of the Trump and Netanyahu’s disastrous and hugely distracting war on Iran — distracting not just in terms of focus but also resources. As Politico reported six days ago in “The Russian oil tanker playing chicken with Trump over Cuba,” while Russia’s attempt to provide oil to Cuba “may be half-hearted in the face of US maritime opposition, Russia watchers say the signal it sends is not”.

The Anatoly Kolodkin is steaming toward the Caribbean.

The Russian oil tanker’s official destination, according to one of its public broadcasts: “Atlantis, USA.” More probably, it’s the Cuban port of Matanzas.

Ferrying an estimated 730,000 barrels of crude oil across the Atlantic, the tanker is flying a Russian flag. A Russian warship escorted it through the English Channel, where it was tracked by the Royal Navy for 48 hours, only to turn back as soon as the tanker was clear.

While the Kremlin declined to confirm reports of Russian oil heading to Cuba, it also has made little effort to conceal its hand.

That’s because the tanker was never really about Cuba at all, people close to the White House, former ambassadors and Russia observers told POLITICO. It’s a message, they said — a negotiating chit, a provocation designed to force a disproportionate American response while Washington is consumed elsewhere.

“Russia loves to poke us in the eye,” Lawrence Gumbiner, who led the U.S. Embassy in Havana during President Donald Trump’s first term, said in an interview. Russia, he said, isn’t “serious about coming to Cuba’s rescue.”

“It’s not in their interest to pick a fight with Trump over something that is so, so clearly within the U.S. orbit as Trump has defined it,” Gumbiner said — a reference to Trump’s so-called “Donroe Doctrine” to assert U.S. dominance in the Western Hemisphere and diminish the influence of adversaries like Russia and China.

Note that the Politico article, and other MSM accounts, claim that the Anatoly Kolodkin was escorted by a Russian warship through the English Channel, but was then left to cross the Atlantic unaccompanied. Some pro-Russian social media accounts (such as this one) have made claims that the tanker was actually escorted by a military frigate and/or submarine, but I have found no evidence to support this.

One of the few things that is clear is that Trump’s policy reversal decision took place some time between March 20-29. On March 20, the US Treasury Department explicitly declared that Cuba would not be allowed to benefit from the US’ recent lifting of sanctions on Russian oil, even as Russian tankers headed its way. From CNBC:

In a general license published Thursday, the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) added Cuba to a list of countries that would be blocked from transactions involving the sale, delivery or offloading of crude or petroleum products that originate from Russia.

The U.S. had temporarily authorized the purchase of Russian oil stranded at sea last week, as part of an effort to stabilize energy markets during the U.S. and Israeli-led war on Iran. The short-term measure suspended sanctions that were first imposed on Moscow following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The update comes as maritime intelligence providers have been tracking two tankers carrying Russian oil and gas heading toward Cuba.

Nine days later, this happened…

In an interview on Friday, just two days before the Kolodkin’s arrival, Secretary of State Marco Rubio made the absurd claim that Cuba doesn’t have a naval blockade surrounding it, adding that the reason why the island nation doesn’t have oil is that it wants the stuff for free. The lie regarding the blockade was so flagrant that it was even awarded a community note on X.

Yesterday, Rubio doubled down on the lies, claiming in an interview with Al Jazeera that the blackouts in Cuba “have nothing to do with us.” While it is true that Cuba was already having power cuts long before the US’ de facto oil blockade, Rubio’s claims of US innocence are simultaneously risible and deeply disturbing. They also suggest that narrative control is becoming a serious problem for the administration’s Cuba strategy (if one can call it that).

The US’ energy blockade of Cuba always had an obvious flaw — its reliance on the threat of tariffs against any country that broke it. After all, not all countries are intimidated by Trump’s tariffs. In our Feb 24 post, “Russia Just Denied Claims It Is Planning to Break the US’ Oil Blockade of Cuba, Albeit Only Partially“, we noted it would take only one or two countries to break the blockade, with the two most obvious candidates being China and Russia:

For its part, China has less to worry about from Trump’s tariff threats than just about any other nation. As we saw in its recent showdown with Washington over rare earth minerals, Beijing can more than hold its own in any tit-for-tat tariff escalation with the US:

Also, Cuba, unlike Venezuela, is a BRICS associate partner. As the Cuban commentator El Necio argues, if Cuba is hung out to dry, the message to the Global South will be that BRICS membership counts for little, if anything, especially as the US becomes increasingly assertive on the global chessboard…

Moscow could also send a tanker or two, though it would risk inflaming tensions with the US just as the two countries are locked in negotiations to end the Ukraine conflict. That said, those negotiations appear to be going nowhere as the US increasingly targets Russia’s shadow fleet. Russia certainly has oil to spare for Cuba as well as the capacity to provide naval protection. Plus, it’s already on the receiving end of just about every US, EU and UK sanction imaginable.

The two big questions that come to mind now are: a) whether Russia will send more shipments in the coming days or weeks; and b) whether other oil producing countries will try to follow Moscow’s example and take advantage of this brief window of opportunity…

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