Cuba, under the US fuel blockade, has suffered its third nationwide blackout since the beginning of the year. The state-owned Electric Union announced the outage on Monday on the island of nearly 10 million people and said the cause was under investigation.
Cuban Energy and Mines Minister Vicente de la O Levy announced that protocols were being rapidly implemented to restore electricity nationwide. 'In this complex situation, worsened by the energy blockade we face, vital services continue to be protected,' the minister said.
Grid operator UNE said it was supplying electricity to some vital services such as hospitals and food production centers. However, by the afternoon, only 1 percent of the capital Havana's electricity demand could be met.
US sanctions worsen the crisis
Cuba was already suffering fuel shortages before US President Donald Trump cut off oil shipments from Venezuela to the island in January. Trump's threat to impose tariffs on any country selling or supplying oil to Cuba significantly worsened the situation and deepened the island's financial crisis. As a result, blackouts and planned outages accelerated.
Since January, Washington has allowed only one oil tanker from Russia to breach the blockade and dock in Cuba, as part of a sanctions campaign aimed at ending more than six decades of communist rule in Havana.
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel accused the US of 'trying to provoke social unrest by strangling Cuba's fuel supply.' In a social media post, he said, 'Amid a genocidal energy blockade, the actions of electricity workers are heroic.'
Residents struggle with prolonged blackouts
This blackout is the eighth power outage on the island of 9.6 million people since late 2024. The government is implementing planned outages nationwide to conserve fuel. In some parts of Havana, blackouts exceed 30 hours, while in rural areas they last more than 70 hours.
Meyboll Font, a 51-year-old freelance social media community manager who spoke to AFP news agency, said, 'Living like this is agony.' Font said her neighborhood in Havana gets by on only 'three or four hours of electricity' a day, but this blackout is worse because 'you never know when the power will come back.'
