Cubans study oil tanker diplomacy for signs of progress in secret talks with US | Cuba

When the sanctioned Russian oil tanker Anatoly Kolodkin docked at Cuba’s Matanzas oil terminal on Tuesday and unloaded 700,000 barrels of crude oil, it was not immediately clear why the ship was allowed to pass through Donald Trump’s oil blockade.

In January, the US president declared on social media: “NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA – ZERO!” but last week he told reporters: “If a country wants to send oil to Cuba right now, I have no problem with that,” and waved off the Russian ship.

Then came the news on Thursday that Cuba would release 2,010 prisoners. The government framed the move as a humanitarian gesture for Holy Week, but observers were quick to connect the two events, seeing both as evidence that negotiations between Washington and Havana were ongoing.

The US oil blockade has plunged the already faltering Cuban economy into the ditch. Tourism is almost dead after airlines in Canada, Russia, China and France ceased operations and Iberia left at the end of May.

Most gas stations are closed. Power outages, which have been a problem for a long time, have now become a daily torment.

After the migration of 2 million people in the last five years, the number of Cubans estimated to be 9.5 million and still living on the island is exhausted. “Everything is collapsing: health, education, transportation, everything,” a man said outside a church in El Cobre, a famous pilgrimage site in the country’s east.

Meanwhile, the public continues to sift through bits of information about the talks, always leaked by the United States.

This is a dialogue between seemingly irreconcilable positions: Trump promises to “get” the candidate, while Cuba argues that its political system is not ready to negotiate.

Initially, many diplomats attributed the tanker’s arrival to the worsening crisis on the island. “One option is that this is a tactical move by the White House,” said one ambassador trying to analyze the week’s events. “So, as the humanitarian emergency worsens, they can point to something specific that they did – even though we know in the grand scheme of things it was nothing.”

But this seemed out of character for Trump, whose humanitarian instincts have never been evident. But the diplomat continued: “Or it could mean that there is some progress in the negotiations. And this is a confidence-building measure.” The prisoner’s release suggests the latter.

William LeoGrande, a professor of government at the American University in Washington, said, pointing to similar incidents that have thwarted efforts at détente: “This suggests that the two sides may be making mutual goodwill gestures to advance their talks.”

Meanwhile, another tanker, Sea Horse, was floating in the Atlantic, carrying 200,000 barrels of Russian fuel. Once Anatoly Kolodkin arrived in Cuba, Seahorse moved to Venezuela, whose government has been willing to appease Trump’s demands since the US kidnapped Nicolás Maduro. The choreography suggested that the oil shipments were a series of carrots offered to the Cuban government.

While no amount of oil or pressure seems likely to encourage the Cuban regime to cede the power it has held since 1959, other events of the past week suggest a more transactional path forward.

Since it was first authorized by the government in 2021, Cuba has become home to more than 10,000 small and medium-sized private businesses, called Mipymes. They are clearly visible in small corner stores all over the island, but also in large container trucks plying the highways.

The Mipymes created a group of very wealthy Cubans, many of whom had connections to the regime and the Gaesa, the military’s economic wing that controlled much of the economy. Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, who is at the forefront of negotiations with the United States, is not only the grandson of former president Raúl Castro, but also the son of Gaesa’s former president, Luis Rodríguez López-Calleja, who died in 2022.

This week, CNN interviewed Fidel’s grandson, Sandro Castro, another member of the Castro family. Sandro is a 33-year-old influencer who is often greeted with exasperation by Cubans for the flamboyant lifestyle he projects, but diplomats say he is also a successful businessman and importer.

“There are a lot of people here who want to do capitalism with sovereignty. I think the majority of Cubans want to be capitalists, not communists,” he told CNN.

Normally, such a statement – ​​let alone his later comments that current Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel was “not doing a good job” – would have earned the speaker a visit from state security. But it doesn’t seem like that in this case. Díaz-Canel’s loss of political defense was touted by the United States as one of the costs of progressing negotiations.

Perhaps a path is emerging in which the Cuban economy will open up to the outside world and senior members of the regime, including the Castros, will maintain their power and influence. This would be consistent with Trump’s statement that he wants a “friendly” takeover of Cuba, mirroring events in Venezuela and giving him a victory at a time when Iran continues to dash hopes for an easy victory.

“This small group is making all the money right now,” said another senior diplomat in Havana. “If Americans say, ‘You can keep your jobs, but you have to open the economy to the United States,’ I can see that happening.”

It is not yet known what this will be like for Trump’s Cuban-American secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who has long expressed his determination to remove Castro from office. “I suspect conservatives in Miami would have a hard time accepting someone named Castro in a position of authority,” said Pedro Freyre, a Miami lawyer at the heart of the exile community. “But while the Castro name carries a heavy historical burden, it may be difficult to dislodge. Díaz-Canel is a consensus-based leader without deep historical connections, which makes it easier for him to move.”

Even more worrying is the fact that such an agreement would leave the approximately 40% of Cubans who do not work in the private sector or receive money from relatives abroad. These people are often elderly and have devoted their lives to a revolution that promises to watch over them from cradle to grave. The answer is probably not good at all: They are currently on the brink of starvation.