Cuba’s Diaz-Canel has vowed to resist US pressure to resign as Trump escalates threats and tightens an oil blockade on the island.
Published on 10 April 2026
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel says he will not bow to pressure from the United States to resign.
“Quitting is not part of our vocabulary,” he said in an interview with US broadcaster NBC News on Thursday.
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The president described Communist-ruled Cuba as an “independent sovereign state” with the “right to self-determination”, and said the island is not “subject to the designs of the United States.”
“The people who are in leadership positions in Cuba are not chosen by the U.S. government,” he said.
Since 2018, the president has faced increasing pressure from the administration of President Donald Trump and demands for regime change.
Trump has hinted that Cuba may meet the same fate as Venezuela and Iran.
“I built this great army. I said, ‘You’ll never have to use it.’ But sometimes you have to use it. And Cuba is next,” the US president said last month.
Cuba’s main oil supplies were cut off after Trump ousted Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro in January. The US has since imposed an oil blockade on the island and threatened to impose tariffs on any country that sells oil to Cuba.
‘Hostile Policy’
Diaz-Canel condemned the US’s “hostile policy” that has forced Cuba to suffer widespread power blackouts, fuel shortages and disruptions in water and food distribution.
He also said that the Trump administration has “deprived the American people of normal relations with Cuba.”
Since returning to office last year, Trump has labeled Cuba an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to US national security and threatened to “take over” the island.
Current tensions date back to the Cold War, when the United States took adversarial stances against leftist governments across the Americas.
The Cuban Revolution overthrew the US-backed military government in the 1950s. In the early 1960s, Washington imposed a sweeping trade embargo aimed at weakening revolutionary leader Fidel Castro.
‘We cannot betray Cuba’
Despite American pressure, Russia remains a close ally of Cuba.
“We cannot betray Cuba. There is no question of it. We cannot leave it to itself,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said at a news conference in Havana on Friday.
Last month, a Russian-flagged tanker carrying 730,000 barrels of oil arrived in Cuba – the first tanker to reach the island in three months.
