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• Treasury’s OFAC added Cuba to a list of countries barred from receiving Russian oil, even as two tankers carrying Russian fuel head toward the island
• Cuba has had no confirmed fuel imports since Jan. 9, triggering nationwide blackouts and what officials describe as the island’s worst crisis since the Soviet collapse
• The U.S. temporarily eased Russian oil sanctions on March 12 to stabilize global energy prices after the Iran war, but explicitly excluded Cuba, North Korea, and Russian-occupied Ukraine

WASHINGTON (TDR) — The U.S. Treasury Department added Cuba Thursday to a list of countries prohibited from receiving Russian crude oil or petroleum products, even as two tankers carrying Russian fuel use deceptive maritime tactics to reach the fuel-starved island that has been under an American energy blockade since January.

The big picture: The Treasury move is an amendment to a broader Russian oil sanctions relief package the U.S. issued on March 12, when surging energy prices after the Iran war forced Washington to temporarily allow the sale of Russian crude already loaded on tankers at sea. That relief was extended to most of the world, but not to U.S. adversaries.

• The amended general license allows Russian oil transactions for countries receiving the original relief through April 11, but explicitly prohibits transactions involving Cuba, North Korea, and Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine
• The original March 12 order had only carved out Iran; Thursday’s amendment broadened the exclusion list as the tankers heading to Cuba became publicly tracked

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Why it matters: Cuba has not received a confirmed fuel import since Jan. 9. The blockade, which began after Washington deposed Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Jan. 3, eliminated Havana’s primary oil supplier almost overnight.

• A near-total grid collapse on March 16 left roughly 10 million Cubans without electricity, per Cuban authorities and the U.S. Embassy in Havana
• Airlines have curtailed flights to the island, dealing a secondary blow to Cuba’s tourism sector, one of its last functional economic engines
• Russia has pledged to provide Cuba “all possible assistance, including financial aid,” per Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, setting up a direct test of whether Moscow will push the tankers through

Driving the news: The two tankers en route are not operating transparently, and one is already sanctioned, raising the question of how Treasury’s prohibition will be enforced once they reach Cuban waters.

• The Hong Kong-flagged tanker Sea Horse, carrying roughly 27,000 tons of diesel, is expected to arrive “in several days,” per maritime intelligence firm Windward; it is not under U.S. sanctions but has shown behavior consistent with sanctions evasion, including switching off its Automatic Identification System during a ship-to-ship transfer near Cyprus and repeatedly altering its stated destination
• The Russian-flagged Anatoly Kolodkin, which is sanctioned, is carrying 730,000 barrels of crude and is expected to reach Cuba by early April, per maritime analytics firm Kpler
• Windward noted that if Sea Horse arrives, it would be the first confirmed delivery of refined petroleum products to Cuba since early January
• Trump said earlier this week he believes he will have the “honor of taking Cuba,” adding: “Whether I free it, take it, I think I could do anything I want with it”

What they’re saying: Washington and Havana are framing the same blockade in directly opposing terms.

• U.S. official to Fox News: “The only way for Cuba to fix its energy crisis is to address the root cause of its economic failures: total government control of economic life. The regime must make significant changes, allowing for privatization and for the Cuban people to provide for themselves.”
• Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel condemned the blockade as an “economic war” and pledged “unyielding resistance” in a post on X
• Kremlin spokesman Peskov: “Of course, we are ready to provide all possible assistance, and all these issues are being worked out with our Cuban counterparts”

Yes, but: The U.S. is simultaneously easing Russian oil sanctions on the global market to help stabilize energy prices from the Iran war, while blocking Cuba specifically from accessing that same Russian oil on humanitarian grounds it has not publicly articulated. The policy effectively tells the rest of the world to keep buying Russian crude to avoid a recession, while telling Cuba it cannot do the same to keep its power grid on.

• Russia, which helped fund the Iran war’s disruption of global supply by sustaining oil exports to China throughout the conflict, is now positioned as Havana’s only potential lifeline
• Trump’s tariff threats against countries supplying oil to Cuba have been met with indifference by Moscow, which noted the two countries “don’t have much trade right now”

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Between the lines: The Cuba blockade and the Iran war are now producing a single, compounding foreign policy problem: the same energy crisis Trump is managing in the Persian Gulf is the leverage Russia is exploiting in the Caribbean. Washington is trying to run two simultaneous pressure campaigns, one to force Iran to the table and one to force Cuba into political reform, using energy as the instrument in both. What neither campaign accounts for is that Russia, which has an interest in both conflicts continuing, can subsidize Cuba’s survival at relatively low cost while the U.S. is distracted and oil revenues from non-blocked markets remain high.

• The Sea Horse used ship-to-ship transfer tactics near Cyprus and AIS spoofing, suggesting the Russian fuel supply chain to Cuba has already adapted to enforcement pressure
• Switzerland announced Friday it would halt weapons exports to the U.S. over the Iran conflict, signaling that the diplomatic cost of Washington’s simultaneous pressure campaigns is beginning to compound across multiple theaters

What’s next:

• Treasury’s amended license runs through April 11; no decision on extension or further tightening has been announced
• The Sea Horse is expected to arrive in Cuban waters within days; whether the U.S. Navy intercepts or boards the vessel would mark a significant escalation of the Cuba blockade
• The Anatoly Kolodkin, a sanctioned vessel, is due in early April; its arrival would force a direct U.S. enforcement decision
• Trump has not outlined what conditions would end the Cuba blockade or what political changes in Havana would satisfy the administration’s stated terms

If the U.S. is easing Russian oil sanctions globally to manage one energy crisis while tightening them regionally to manage another, what principle determines which populations bear the cost of that triage?

Sources

This report was compiled using information from CNBC, Free Malaysia Today / AFP, Fox News, The Moscow Times, and Bloomberg

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