Cuba will experience a nationwide blackout for the third time in six months Powerful Stories

The people of Cuba have already faced economic and humanitarian problems, mainly due to the US blockade.

Cuba has experienced its third national blackout since the start of the year, as the country’s oil reserves dwindle and its power grid collapses due to power outages caused by the US oil blockade.

The blackout in the country of about 10 million people was reported on Monday by the state-run Electric Union, which said the cause was being investigated.

Cuba’s Minister of Energy and Mines Vicente de la O Levy said plans were quickly put in place to restore electricity to all of Cuba after the blackout.

“Essential services continue to be protected, amid the growing challenges and power outages we face,” he said.

Grid operator UNE said it was providing electricity to some essential facilities, including hospitals and food processing facilities, but by evening it was able to serve only 1 percent of Havana’s capital.

Cuba has already suffered from oil shortages before US President Donald Trump cut off oil from Venezuela to the island in January. But Trump’s actions, including threatening tariffs on any country that sells or supplies oil to Cuba, have only worsened the situation, deepening the island’s economic crisis. As a result, blackouts and power cuts have increased.

Since January, Washington has allowed only one oil tanker, from Russia, to pass through the blockade and port in Cuba, as part of punitive campaign the goal of ending more than sixty years of communist rule in Havana.

Trump also said about The hijacking of the US The socialist president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, in January, is to replace him who will be forced to work with the US, as he will do with Cuba.

Cuba President Miguel Díaz-Canel he accused the US of trying to “spark unrest by killing Cuban oil”.

“The actions of the electrical workers in the middle of blocking the deadly force are strong,” he wrote on social media.

The blackout is the eighth on the island of 9.6 million people since the end of 2024. It comes when the government imposes blackouts throughout the country – at 30 hours straight in some parts of Havana and more than 70 hours in some rural areas – in an attempt to protect fuel.

“Living like this is painful,” Meyboll Font, 51, a public worker, told AFP.

Font said that his area of ​​Havana had been surviving “only three or four hours a day”, but that the outages were worse because “you never know when (the electricity) will come back”.