Cuba suffers second blackout across the island in a week amid Trump’s oil embargo | Powerful Stories

US President Donald Trump has put the Caribbean island under the oil barrier, disrupting its aging grid.

Cuba has also reported its second global blackout in less than a week, leaving the island in darkness just before dusk.

On Friday, Union Electrica de Cuba, the government agency that oversees the power grid, he announced that the outage started at 4:30pm local time (20:30 GMT).

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There is no need to report power outages. But it follows a corresponding power failure Monday, bringing the total number of lost islands to four since the start of the year. Two more blackouts occurred in March.

Blackouts are not uncommon in Cuba, where power outages are increasing. Much of this system dates back to the Cold War, between the 1960s and 1980s.

But the crisis has worsened since January, when US President Donald Trump effectively cut off Cuba’s foreign oil supply.

Already, Cuba has been under the longest trade embargo in modern history. Since the 1960s, the US has strictly restricted trade with the island, which lies 140 kilometers – or 90 miles – from its coast.

Since his second term in office, Trump has sought to initiate regime change on the communist-ruled island. Opponents have long criticized the government in Havana for human rights abuses, including a violent crackdown on dissent.

On January 3, Trump authorized military action against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, a socialist leader and ally of the Cuban government. The operation culminated in Maduro’s kidnapping and transport to New York, where he was arrested on drug and weapons charges.

Shortly after Maduro was ousted, Trump announced that Venezuela would no longer send oil or money to Cuba. His administration continues to control Venezuelan oil in the first months.

Then, on January 29, Trump issued an executive order declaring Cuba an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the US. As part of this policy, they threatened any country that supplies the island with expensive oil.

Since then, only one Russian oil tanker has reached Cuba – but only in March.

By 2023, Cuba will produce only 40 percent of the oil it uses, according to the International Energy Agency. Some come from overseas.

Human rights experts have warned that the continued lack of oil could have consequences for ordinary people in Cuba, as public services such as transport have been shut down.

In June, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, he pointed to the numbers which showed infant mortality nearly doubled in recent months.

“The oil embargo imposed as of early 2026 and the recent tightening of foreign sanctions, taken together, are hurting the Cuban people, especially the most vulnerable,” Turk said in a statement.

“Children are dying because doctors do not have access to essential drugs and medicines. This is unacceptable.”

The Trump administration, meanwhile, He criticized poor management in the government of Cuba due to power outages.

“We have not done anything to punish the Cuban government,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Al Jazeera in March.

Before the oil embargo, Cuba planned to switch some of its energy sources away from fossil fuels, replacing them with solar power and other renewable energy sources.

It has facilitated this transition, with the help of solar technology imported from the US’s biggest economic rival, China.

However, renewable energy accounts for only about 18 percent of Cuba’s total energy, according to estimates for 2022. Cuba aims to generate about a quarter of its energy from renewable sources by 2030.