Trump Administration Allows Sanctioned Russian Oil Tanker to Reach Crisis-Stricken Cuba

The Trump administration allowed a sanctioned Russian oil tanker, the Anatoly Kolodkin, to proceed to Cuba on Sunday, effectively lifting the de facto oil blockade Washington had imposed on the island since January 2026. U.S. President Donald Trump confirmed the decision aboard Air Force One, stating he had no objection to the delivery regardless of its origin. The tanker, owned by the Russian state company Sovcomflot, was carrying between 650,000 and 730,000 barrels of Urals crude oil, according to ship-tracking data from LSEG and reporting by the New York Times. As of Sunday, the vessel had entered Cuba's exclusive economic zone and was expected to dock at the port of Matanzas in western Cuba on Monday or Tuesday. The reasons behind the Trump administration's decision to allow the shipment remained unclear, according to multiple sources cited by the New York Times.

„If a country wants to deliver some oil to Cuba right now, I have no problem with that, whether it is Russia or not.” — Donald Trump via stern.de

Trump signals regime collapse even as he allows delivery Trump framed the decision as a humanitarian gesture toward Cuba's population while simultaneously predicting the imminent fall of the government in Havana. He described Cuba's leadership as corrupt and argued that whether the island received an oil shipment or not would ultimately make no difference to the regime's fate.

„Cuba is done for, they have a bad regime, they have very bad and corrupt leadership, and whether they get a ship with oil or not will not make a difference.” — Donald Trump via stern.de

Trump added that "within a short time" the Cuban government would fail and that the United States would be ready to help, repeating his earlier warning that "Cuba will be next." The U.S. Coast Guard had stationed two cutters in the region that could have intercepted the tanker, but the White House issued no order to stop it, according to an anonymous U.S. official cited by the New York Times. The Coast Guard referred inquiries to the White House, which declined to comment publicly. Cuban officials also gave no statement on the delivery, though Bloomberg reported that Cuba had recently allowed fuel for the U.S. Embassy to arrive on the island, a gesture seen as a sign of limited diplomatic engagement. The Russian embassy in Mexico stated that Russia considers all restrictions imposed on Cuba illegitimate and is prepared to provide any necessary assistance.

Both the tanker and Sovcomflot have been under U.S. sanctions since 2024 The Anatoly Kolodkin and its owner Sovcomflot have been on the U.S. sanctions list since 2024, making the decision to allow its passage a double departure from existing Western policy — overriding both sanctions against Russia's so-called shadow fleet and the broader U.S. embargo against Cuba. The tanker departed from the Russian Baltic port of Primorsk on March 8 or 9, according to varying reports, and was escorted by the Russian navy through the English Channel. Jorge Piñón, a former oil manager and Cuba energy expert at the University of Texas, explained that the crude oil could be refined into diesel, gasoline, kerosene, and heating oil, but that the process would take approximately three weeks, with distribution inside Cuba requiring an additional week. Piñón estimated that the reserves could be exhausted in less than a month, describing the delivery as buying Cuba time rather than resolving its crisis. The fuel shipment would be enough to power Cuba's thermoelectric power plants for approximately one week, given that they require around 100,000 barrels of oil per day to meet demand, according to Bloomberg. Cuba's domestic oil production covers only around two-fifths of that daily requirement.

Cuba's energy crisis deepened sharply after the U.S. military captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in early January 2026 during a military intervention, after which Washington ensured that Venezuela — until then Cuba's most important oil supplier — halted its deliveries. At the end of January 2026, Trump signed an order imposing tariffs on all countries that sell or deliver oil to Cuba, further tightening the blockade. In one documented case, the U.S. Coast Guard escorted a tanker bound for Cuba away from the island. The United Nations warned that the U.S. campaign was having an increasingly severe impact on hospitals, public sanitation, water delivery, and food distribution. Cuba's 10 million residents had already been subject to chronic rolling power outages for years before the crisis intensified under the current embargo.

Cuba's hospitals and farms paralyzed by months-long fuel shortage Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel stated that the country had received no oil imports for three months prior to this delivery, a period marked by repeated nationwide power outages lasting several days, severe fuel rationing, and a near-collapse of public transport. Several airlines stopped flying to Cuba entirely because of the fuel shortage. The electricity crisis caused tens of thousands of surgeries to be postponed and cut off pregnant women and other patients from basic health services, including dialysis, according to Tanieris Diéguez La O, deputy chief of mission at Cuba's embassy in Washington, as cited by Bloomberg. Humanitarian aid shipments had been stuck in warehouses because trucks lacked fuel, and farms had been paralyzed without functioning tractors, according to Piñón. The broader context of the decision also involves a recent U.S. move to temporarily lift some sanctions against Russia in order to improve global oil supply, which had been restricted by U.S. and Israeli military strikes against Iran. The Russian government's stated position, conveyed through its embassy in Mexico, was that it viewed all restrictions on Cuba as illegitimate and was acting out of a commitment to provide material support to the island.

Cuba oil crisis — key events: — ; — ; — ; — ; —