Cuba’s grid failure cuts power across eastern provinces
Cuba’s national energy grid suffered a major failure early Thursday, cutting electricity to the island’s eastern provinces, authorities said, as residents in Havana faced ongoing blackouts.
The state-run Electric Union said the collapse severed power across Cuba’s eastern provinces from Guantánamo to Ciego de Ávila, and that crews were working to restore service. The union did not provide an estimate for how long the outage would last.
The wider disruption comes as Cuba struggles with an energy system that has deteriorated in recent years amid a prolonged economic crisis. Authorities cited the strain on fuel supplies and said daily life increasingly relies on power rationing, with many communities already accustomed to outages.
Cuba’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, described the energy situation as “tense” on Wednesday, after supplies of oil delivered by a Russian vessel in late March ran out. The country produces barely 40% of the fuel it needs to run its economy, according to the account in the report.
Energy and mines officials described the immediate situation as deteriorating further. On Wednesday evening, Associated Press journalists reported residents in Havana banging pots and pans and setting fire to trash cans in protest of the blackouts, and hours later Energy and Mines Minister Vicente de la O Levy appeared on Cuban television to describe the energy situation as “critical.”
As the outages continued, the consequences reached beyond homes and businesses. The blackout led to reduced work hours and food spoilage because refrigerators stopped working, and in some cases hospitals canceled surgeries.
Cuba’s government has also tied the crisis to U.S. sanctions that it says restrict its ability to obtain oil. It said the blackouts have been driven in part by U.S. pressure after President Donald Trump in January warned of tariffs on any country that sells or provides oil to Cuba, alongside demands that Cuba release political prisoners and move toward political and economic liberalization in return for sanctions relief.
Russia announced plans to send a second fuel ship to Cuba in early April. Russian news reports said the oil tanker left the Russian Baltic port of Vysotsk in January, but had been stuck in the same place in the Atlantic Ocean for the last several weeks, as Cuba continued to face fuel shortages.