Millions of Cubans were left without electricity on Monday after the country’s national power grid collapsed, the state operator UNE confirmed.
The blackout comes amid chronic fuel shortages worsened by a US‑imposed oil blockade. UNE said power was being gradually restored while the cause of the outage is investigated. “There were no failures in the units that were operating when the grid collapsed,” the Ministry of Energy and Mines said.
Cuba, home to around 10 million people, has long faced power cuts. Outages have sparked rare protests in recent years. Last week, at least 14 people were detained after protesters attacked a provincial Communist Party office in Moron. Regional party chief Julio Heriberto Gomez said: “Once again they used a group of delinquents who do not represent the people of Moron.”
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The island depends heavily on imported fuel. Venezuela, which historically supplied half of Cuba’s oil needs, has sent no shipments this year. President Miguel Díaz‑Canel said: “No oil shipments have arrived in Cuba in the last three months.”
US President Donald Trump commented on the crisis, saying he could “have the honour of taking Cuba” and added: “Whether I free it, take it, I could do anything I want with it. They’re a very weakened nation right now.”
Despite tensions, Cuba has opened talks with the United States. Díaz‑Canel said the discussions aim “to find solutions through dialogue to the bilateral differences we have between the two nations.”
The blackout is the third major outage in Cuba over the past four months, highlighting the fragility of the island’s ageing power grid.