\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t United States president Donald Trump gave a strong warning to Cuba following the military operation in Venezuela to capture leader Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, saying the Caribbean island\u2019s government needs to \u201cmake a deal before it is too late.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cuba will no longer be receiving help from Venezuela in exchange for providing security forces for the Venezuelan leadership, Trump wrote in a post on his social network Truth on Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201cCuba lived, for many years, on large amounts of OIL and MONEY from Venezuela. In return, Cuba provided \u2018Security Services\u2019 for the last two Venezuelan dictators,\u201d he said, in reference to Maduro and late president Hugo Ch\u00e1vez. \u201cBUT NOT ANYMORE!\u201d Trump posted.<\/p>\n
\u201cTHERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA \u2013 ZERO! I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE,\u201d he warned.<\/p>\n
The U.S. leader did not give details of what will happen to Cuba if they don\u2019t reach a deal with his country.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Cuba replies However, Cuba seems to be preparing for a military operation similar to the one carried out in Caracas on January 3.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, the Cuban military carried out training exercises especially focused on territorial defense as part of activities for the National Defense Day. A statement by the central committee of the Cuban Communist party said that the training was particularly important in light of the recent U.S. announcements, without directly mentioning that country by name.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing well-prepared in a systematic way, and being willing to die if needed, is the best signal you can give to an enemy that uses any sort of trickery in the hopes of submitting you to them,\u201d said the statement.<\/p>\n
Cuban President Miguel D\u00edaz-Canel also seemed to address Trump\u2019s statement with a post on X on Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201cCuba is a free, independent and sovereign nation. No one tells us what to do,\u201d he wrote. D\u00edaz-Canel rejected Trump\u2019s comments without mentioning him, saying that the economic hardship his country suffers is a result of the \u201cextreme choking\u201d measures carried out by the U.S. with its blockade on Cuba for the past six decades, \u201cwhich it is now threatening with doubling down on.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCuba does not attack, it has been attacked by the U.S. for 66 years, and it doesn\u2019t threaten, it prepares itself, willing to defend the homeland until the last drop of blood,\u201d the Cuban president said.<\/p>\n
After the U.S. captured Maduro, D\u00edaz-Canel said that 32 Cubans who were part of the Venezuelan president\u2019s security team had died during the U.S. military operation in Caracas.<\/p>\n
In addition to the decades-old complications derived from the U.S. blockade, Cuba has been suffering an energy crisis since 2024, with mass power cuts that have become a constant in recent months. Around 60% of the country was left with no electricity on Christmas day, and outages can go for over 20 hours at a time.<\/p>\n
Venezuela was Cuba\u2019s main oil provider. The crisis will likely worsen with Trump\u2019s decision, as Cuba\u2019s energy system is on the verge of collapse due to infrastructure issues, lack of funds to fix old equipment, and no money to buy oil elsewhere to generate electricity.<\/p>\n
U.S. protection In his post, Trump said that Venezuela \u201cdoesn\u2019t need protection anymore from the thugs and extortionists who held them hostage for so many years\u201d and that it now has the U.S. to protect them. \u201cAnd protect them we will,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Trump reposted on his Truth Social profile several replies from his followers regarding his Cuba post. In one of them, a user jokingly said that U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio \u2014 the son of two Cuban exiles \u2014 should be president of Cuba. \u201cSounds good to me!\u201d Trump wrote.<\/p>\n
He also shared an edited image of his Wikipedia page where a segment saying he is \u201cActing president of Venezuela\u201d was added to the list of his public roles. The actual Wikipedia page does not show such information.<\/p>\n
You may also be interested in: How the US strike on Venezuela could affect Argentina\u2019s oil industry<\/p>\n
Cover image credits: Khamenei.ir\/Gage Skidmore<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
United States president Donald Trump gave a strong warning to Cuba following the military operation in Venezuela to capture leader Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, saying the Caribbean island\u2019s government needs to \u201cmake a deal before it is too late.\u201d Cuba will no longer be receiving help from Venezuela in exchange for providing security forces for the Venezuelan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":25237,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1184,60,54,7535,332,306],"tags":[7533,88,183,7534,3298,904],"class_list":["post-25236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cuba","category-donald-trump","category-latin-america","category-miguel-diaz-canel","category-venezuela","category-world","tag-cuba","tag-donald-trump","tag-latin-america","tag-miguel-diaz-canel","tag-venezuela","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25236\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}