- 7 weeks ago
Russia’s return to Cuba is not a replay of the 1962 missile crisis — it’s a fight over leverage, fuel, and geopolitical messaging. Elvira Bary breaks down what Moscow actually wants from Havana in 2026, why the island still matters near the U.S. coastline, and why today’s pressure point is oil rather than nuclear missiles.
The episode traces how Soviet subsidies kept Castro’s regime afloat, how Cuba became a proxy force in Angola and Ethiopia, what happened when the USSR collapsed, and why Venezuela’s oil later became Cuba’s lifeline. It also looks at Russia’s recent naval signals in Havana, the debt write-off, and the role of military cooperation as Trump’s Tomahawk rhetoric and Moscow’s response put Cuba back into the headlines.
For listeners interested in Cuba history, Cold War analysis, Russia and Latin America, military strategy, and current affairs commentary, this is a sharp long-form explainer. It also works well for geopolitical podcast listening, history analysis, and background viewing on U.S.-Russia tensions, sanctions, and authoritarian alliances.
The episode traces how Soviet subsidies kept Castro’s regime afloat, how Cuba became a proxy force in Angola and Ethiopia, what happened when the USSR collapsed, and why Venezuela’s oil later became Cuba’s lifeline. It also looks at Russia’s recent naval signals in Havana, the debt write-off, and the role of military cooperation as Trump’s Tomahawk rhetoric and Moscow’s response put Cuba back into the headlines.
For listeners interested in Cuba history, Cold War analysis, Russia and Latin America, military strategy, and current affairs commentary, this is a sharp long-form explainer. It also works well for geopolitical podcast listening, history analysis, and background viewing on U.S.-Russia tensions, sanctions, and authoritarian alliances.
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LearningTranscript
00:00Cuba has been Russia's closest foothold in the Western Hemisphere for decades.
00:07Back in the Soviet era, Moscow kept Fidel Castro afloat with massive subsidies.
00:13Not out of love, but for one reason – a lever against the United States.
00:20That lever almost snapped the world in half in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis,
00:28when a small island turned into the most dangerous chess square on Earth.
00:34And now Cuba is in the headlines again.
00:37With Trump's recent talk, people are asking the same nervous question
00:41are we heading toward Bay of Pigs 2.0?
00:46A new missile crisis in history,
00:49looping back just with different faces on the posters.
00:54I am Elvira Barry.
00:55I grew up in the Soviet Union.
00:57Today, we will look at what Russia wants from Cuba right now,
01:01what it is willing to offer in return,
01:04and why this situation is fundamentally different from 1962.
01:10Here is our roadmap.
01:12Missiles near Miami.
01:13The original Cuban Missile Crisis and how it changed Cuba, Russia and the US.
01:20Subsidies building Havana.
01:21How Castro's regime survived on the Soviet aid.
01:25Fists for hire.
01:27How Cuba returned their favors by renting out its military.
01:32When subsidies died, what happened to Cuba after the Soviet Union collapsed?
01:38Fuel is politics.
01:40How oil imports from Venezuela became Cuba's new lifeline.
01:45Leverage, not love.
01:47What the Russian-Cuban relationship looks like today.
01:51Tomahovsk and signals.
01:53Why the Kremlin's response to Trump's announcement about Tomahovsk for Ukraine involved Cuba.
02:01The collapsing club.
02:03Why Cuba's main problem is being part of the informal dictators club.
02:08If you want more analysis like this, subscribe, like, and share.
02:14And if you'd like to support the channel, you can join my think tank, use PayPal or Superthings.
02:21Or click the hype button.
02:24Now, let's start where the fear was born.
02:28Missiles near Miami
02:32In 1959, Fidel Castro took power on a promise of dignity and justice.
02:37Within a few years, he locked Cuba in a direct confrontation with the United States.
02:43In April 1961, the Bay of Pigs invasion failed.
02:48But Havana realized just too well that the next attempt might be bigger and it might succeed.
02:57So, Cuba wanted a shield.
03:00And the Soviet Union wanted a forward position in a location where it could directly threaten the U.S.,
03:08its biggest geopolitical rival.
03:11That is how you get to 1962.
03:14Moscow secretly sent nuclear-capable missiles to Cuba.
03:18For Khrushchev, this was about changing the map.
03:22If you can place weapons near Florida, you can force Washington to treat you like an equal.
03:28The United States discovered the missiles through U-2 reconnaissance flights.
03:33Then Kennedy ordered a blockade, calling it a quarantine.
03:38Because even the vocabulary was dangerous.
03:42For 13 days, the world lived in fear of a nuclear war breaking out.
03:47The worst moment was October 27, when a U-2 was shut down over Cuba and the pressure spiked.
03:57The crisis unfolded much like a stirring game.
04:01But it did not end because anyone blinked.
04:05It ended because both sides found a common ground.
04:09The public part of the deal was simple.
04:12The Soviet Union would remove the missiles from Cuba.
04:16The United States would pledge not to invade Cuba.
04:21The private part was the key.
04:23Khrushchev demanded something he could sell at home.
04:28The removal of American Jupiter missiles from Turkey.
04:32Kennedy did not want that to look like a swap under pressure.
04:36So the United States quietly agreed to remove those Jupiters later.
04:42Those missiles were, in truth, already seen as obsolete.
04:47But such a deal, if made public, would still make him look bad on television.
04:53After the crisis, both sides added guardrails because they understood how close they came.
05:01The hotline came soon after and crisis management became its own kind of weapon.
05:08And Cuba?
05:10Cuba learned that when you let someone else place their big weapons on your soil,
05:16you become a battlefield without firing a shot.
05:20But still, Havana did not walk away from its dangerous friendship with the Soviet Union.
05:26This friendship was Castro's only chance to keep the country in his hands.
05:33Subsidies building Havana
05:37Custer stayed in power because Cuba got a patron that could replace the American market it had just lost.
05:45The US embargo didn't disappear.
05:48But it stopped being decisive when the Soviet bloc stepped in as a substitute.
05:55To stay part of this ecosystem, Cuba didn't have to become efficient.
06:00It only had to stay loyal.
06:03The core trade was deeply political.
06:07Cuba exported sugar and later nickel and other raw materials.
06:11The Soviet Union and the socialist bloc bought those goods on significantly
06:17better terms than the free market would offer.
06:20In return, Cuba got oil, machinery, and loans.
06:26In 1972, Cuba joined Comic-Con, which made this arrangement more structured.
06:32This is where many Western observers get lost.
06:36They look at the embargo and assume it should have crushed the regime.
06:42But an embargo works only when the target is isolated.
06:46And Cuba was connected with socialist states on the other side of the globe.
06:52The Soviet Union also kept supporting Custer's regime with military cooperation.
06:57The Cuban forces got training and intelligence ties.
07:01The kind of assistance that doesn't make headlines.
07:05And there's one more part that matters for today.
07:09The debt.
07:10Over decades, Cuba accumulated a massive Soviet-era debt.
07:14After the USSR collapsed, that debt became a ghost argument that poisoned the relationship with
07:22Russia for years.
07:23Then Moscow made a strategic decision.
07:27In 2013-2014, Russia agreed to write off 90% of Cuba's Soviet-era debt,
07:36the debt, commonly reported as roughly $32 billion out of about $35 billion.
07:44Cuba would repay the remaining few billions over time.
07:48Why did Moscow do that?
07:50Not out of charity, but because it still needs Cuba for the same purposes the Soviet Union needed it for.
07:58As a lever close to the United States border.
08:02Fists for Hire
08:07Moscow wanted rich without risk at home.
08:11Havana wanted money, protection, and a mission that could be sold as glory, not dependency.
08:17So Cuba became something like a hired feast for a patron who preferred to stay in the shadows.
08:25Angola is the cleanest example.
08:28In late 1975, Cuba rushed troops to support the local socialist government in the civil war.
08:35Roughly 36,000 Cuban soldiers arrived to Angola over the next few months.
08:41By the late 1980s, Cuba had tens of thousands of troops in Angola,
08:46and the fighting of Quito-Quan Vale became one of the symbolic peaks of that long intervention.
08:55For Moscow, that was clean leverage.
08:58If Cubans fight, the Soviet Union gains influence without putting Soviet conscripts in African graves.
09:06Havana benefited as well, just in a less obvious way.
09:12A small, sanctioned island suddenly gets to act like a world power.
09:18That feeling helped the regime look taller than it was.
09:23Ethiopia is the second example.
09:26In the Hagan War, Soviet support and a large Cuban deployment helped Ethiopia reserve the battlefield.
09:33Declassified US intelligence reporting from the period describes a Cuban expeditionary force of
09:40around 17,000, providing the cutting edge for the counteroffensive.
09:45Now, ask the awkward question.
09:49Was Cuba doing its own foreign policy, or was it rented out?
09:56The honest answer is both.
09:59And that's exactly why it worked.
10:01Castro had his own ideology and his own ego.
10:05He did not need Moscow to tell him that backing fellow revolutionaries was good propaganda,
10:11but the planes, the weapons, the fuel, and the long-term resupply depended on the Soviet system.
10:21Cuba could be bold as long as it stayed inside the patron's budget.
10:27There's a human detail to that era.
10:30Those Cuban kids in uniforms shipped across the ocean then sent back with scars and silence.
10:39In January 1989, as Cuban forces began pulling out of Angola,
10:44Western journalists got to interview Cuban soldiers.
10:47One 21-year-old soldier, Blanca Guinarte, said,
10:52If the peace agreement fails, we are willing to come back.
10:57That's the voice of someone who believes she is defending a noble cause.
11:04And that's the twist.
11:06Cuba's proxy role didn't just serve Soviet strategy, it also served Cuba's domestic control.
11:13It gave the regime a heroic story to wrap around an economy that could not stand on its own.
11:20This arrangement worked until Cuba got hit by the worst possible event
11:25for any client's state. Its patron disappeared when subsidies died.
11:35When the Soviet Union collapsed and Comic-Con vanished, Cuba lost its main market,
11:42its main supply, and the financial padding that made the whole system feel stable.
11:47What followed was the special period. And the name is almost a joke. There was
11:54nothing special about it. It was just scarcity every day for years.
12:01You can measure it in calories. The average food intake in Cuban residents dropping from about
12:083,000 calories per day in 1989 to about 2,100 in 1993. Other studies report even lower numbers in
12:20the
12:20worst years. You can measure it in blackouts too, with long daily power cuts becoming part of normal life.
12:29You can also measure it in bodies. A famous line of research used Cuba as a
12:36grim natural experiment. People ate less and moved more because there was no fuel.
12:44One study described an average population weight loss of about 5.5 kg during the mid-1990s crisis.
12:54There also were sharp declines in diabetes and heart disease before weight regained later and those gains
13:03faded. But numbers still don't show the lived texture. For that, you need one ordinary sin.
13:13In September 1991, Havana started a program of issuing bicycles to city residents to conserve fuel. And
13:22every day Gonzalez was now riding to work, part of a city suddenly rebuilt around pedals because engines
13:31could not be fed. That's what economic collapse looks like when it hits transportation first. Abandoned,
13:39rusting vehicles and a lot of people on bikes. During the special period, Havana tightened control
13:46and also opened small pressure valves. The government leaned harder on rationing and policing, but it also
13:54allowed to limit self-employment and push tourism and hard currency zones. Still Russia built.
14:03By 1994, the island saw open anger on the Malecon in Havana, the Maleconazo. Around the same time,
14:12desperate people tried to flee by sea in large numbers which led to the tugboat hurting the Mars tragedy
14:19that took 41 lives. Cuba never truly recovered from its patrons collapse. Yes, it adapted and survived by
14:27building new income pipes. Tourism, emittances, deals with new patrons. And above all, fuel. Because without fuel,
14:38nothing moves. Fuel as politics. Today, the Cuban leadership desperately needs two things. A steady flow
14:50of hard currency and fuel, enough to keep the lights on and the streets quiet as the economy pillars are
14:57cracking one after another. Start with the most fragile pillar, tourism. In 2024, official Cuban figures
15:06showed about 2.2 million international visitors to the island. Far below the government's earlier targets
15:14and still well under pre-pandemic levels. Fewer tourists mean less hard currency. Less hard currency means
15:24less ability to buy fuel and spare parts. Then, blackouts get worse and tourism gets even harder to sell.
15:33It's a loop that feeds on itself. The second pillar is remittances. Cubans working abroad send money
15:41home to their families for whom this money is often a lifeline. An estimated 2 billion dollars comes to Cuba
15:49each year as remittances. But much of this money bypasses the state. Official transfer channels have been
15:57unstable recently. For example, Western Union shut down for months. That forced many senders into informal
16:05routes. The government tries to capture more remittance dollars through dollar stores, but to no avail.
16:14Now, the center of gravity. Oil. For years, Venezuela was the key supplier. In the 2010s, it used to provide
16:23Cuba with about 100,000 barrels per day. By 2023, however, these exports dropped by near a half,
16:33to around 55,000 barrels per day. Between January and November of 2025, Venezuela sent an average of
16:41about 27,000 barrels per day, covering roughly half of Cuba's oil deficit. Mexico stepping in more than
16:49expected. By May 2025, it was sending to Cuba about 20,100 barrels per day of crude and 2,700
16:58barrels
16:59per day of oil products, valued around 600 million dollars. But this still is not enough. For years, Cuba
17:09benefited from the global service layer that helps sanctioned countries move their oil. This layer,
17:17known as the Shadow Fleet, includes hundreds of ships and shady service providers that handle the
17:24paperwork. It operates under a variety of third-country flags, but their real beneficiaries are sanctioned
17:33regimes that sit on oil. Russia, Iran and, until recently, Venezuela. I have looked into this operation
17:41in another video. Venezuela used the Shadow Fleet to sell its oil to Cuba on better-than-market terms.
17:49Cuba was getting this oil really cheap, as Venezuela didn't have other major buyers in the region.
17:56With Maduro's fault, this arrangement is no more. International bodies are considering lifting sanctions
18:03from Venezuela so it will be able to sell its oil to other markets. It no longer needs Cuba as
18:10a loyal
18:10customer. And Cuba has no other supplier that can sell it that much oil that cheap. In January 2026,
18:20Reuters quoted a Havana business owner Mario Valverde saying that repercussions are not going to be very
18:27good about the loss of Venezuelan oil. That line is the whole story in one sentence. No fuel means no
18:37transport. No transport means no repairs. No repairs mean deeper blackouts. And deeper blackouts mean a
18:47government that has to spend more on control because it has less to offer. And unlike in the 1960s,
18:57no one is coming to rescue the regime in Havana. Russia will not do it. For the reasons we'll now
19:04take a look at.
19:07Leverage.love
19:11Russia's goal in Cuba today is not to save Cuba. It's to use Cuba as a cheap lever in a
19:17fight for global
19:18dominance. The fight Russia is losing everywhere else. The lever works because of geography. Cuba is
19:26close enough to the United States that any Russian presence there reads like a message. Moscow wants
19:33Washington to feel a small cage at home. Not a heart attack, but still something that forces attention.
19:42That's why the most visible tool is fear at sea. In June 2024, a Russian naval group arrived in Havana,
19:50including the nuclear-powered submarine Kazan and the frigate Admiral Gorshkov. Cuban officials said the
19:58ships carried no nuclear weapons. Russia called it a visit. Everyone else called it a show. A Reuters photo
20:08series captured the scene, the submarine sliding into the bay while people watched from the sea wall and
20:16tourists drift past in vintage cars. Like, history is looping on purpose. This is the kind of signal
20:23Moscow loves. It is loud enough to make headlines. It is controlled enough to avoid real escalation.
20:32It tells the Kremlin's domestic audience, we can still scare America. And it tells Cuba, we are still
20:40here for you. Russia can bankroll the island the way the USSR did, but it can ship a tanker now
20:46and then,
20:47or wrench credit, or promise parts for the grid. In March 2024, 19,000 metric tons of Russian oil arrived
20:57in Cuba after a year-long Hades, framed as help with power outages and fuel shortages. The third tool is
21:20Symbolism inside the Global South. Russia wants to show it still has friends despite sanctions. Cuba wants
21:30to show it is not isolated. Both sides staged the same photo ops. Flags, hang shakes, speeches about
21:40historic ties. But since Russia stretched itself in with the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Cuba became
21:47less of an asset and more of a bill. Every time Cuba's grid collapses further, the cost of stabilizing it
21:56rises. Russia's economy is already strained by war and sanctions. So Moscow tries to buy influence in
22:05small pieces. One fuel delivery, one headline, then back to scarcity. That is not helping Cuba much. But
22:15that's all Moscow is willing to spare. Tomahovsk and Signals
22:22In October 2025, President Trump said he might send Ukraine long-range Tomahov missiles if Russia
22:31did not move towards setting the war. It was a threat delivered on Air Force One, the way Trump likes
22:39to
22:39do it. Public blunt designed to land in Moscow in real time. Russia reacted like it always does.
22:49To a threat it can't fully control. With escalation talk. Dmitry Medvedev warned that supplying Tomahovsk
22:58could end badly. Leaning on the old Russian argument that Tomahovsk are hard to distinguish after launch
23:06and that this creates nuclear risk. It's a familiar trick. Turn a conventional weapons question into an
23:15apocalypse. Apocalypse question. Make the West feel responsible for the sky falling. Another part of
23:23Russia's response directly involved Cuba. Amid the Tomahovsk talks, Russia's upper house ratified an
23:31intergovernmental agreement on military cooperation with Cuba that had been signed in March 2025.
23:38On November 2, Trump backed off, saying for now he was not considering a Tomahov deal for Ukraine.
23:49For Russia that looked like their Cuban move worked. When Moscow wants to warn Washington it has only a few
23:57places where a small move looks bigger than it is. Cuba is one of them. And this is also why
24:04Washington keeps
24:05circling back to their island. Cuba is close enough to the US coastline to be strategically intolerable in a
24:15major confrontation. And if you want to squeeze Cuba, you don't start with Havana. You start with the fuel
24:23line. That fuel line used to run through Venezuela. That's why pressure on Venezuela hits Cuba like a punch to
24:32the engine. There's one more detail worth holding onto. This is not 1962. Russia is not policing missiles on Cuba.
24:42Moscow's goal is to create anxiety and destruction without overspending or risking a direct confrontation.
24:50The Renewed Military Collaboration Agreement achieves exactly that. So, when you see Russian flags in Havana,
25:00China don't ask, are they about to start a war with America? Ask the more realistic question.
25:08What message are they trying to send? And what problem are they trying to dodge?
25:15The Collapsing Club
25:19Cuba's biggest problem is that it's been stuck for decades as part of the Dictators Club,
25:26a network of authoritarian regimes that help each other evade Western sanctions and survive.
25:33And today we are seeing this club collapsing. When Bashar Assad's regime fell in Syria,
25:39that was a strong blow to the network. But the capture of Nicolas Maduro and the escalating protests in Iran
25:48can possibly put an end to it. Without Venezuelan oil, Cuba's fuel cap widens beyond repair.
25:56The island can't simply replace that supply because suppliers want cash and insurers want paperwork.
26:05That's why Cuba's leadership keeps hunting for any patron or workaround it can find.
26:11It turns to Russia for help, but the former patron can offer nothing but an occasional batch of fuel.
26:19And even this tiny stream might soon dry out because of the events in Iran.
26:25This January Iran entered a major internal crisis. Two weeks of large-scale protests resulted in
26:33thousands of deaths and a severe crackdown with mass arrests. The protesters have reportedly taken over
26:40two cities in the west of the country. For Putin's Russia, Iran is a critical partner.
26:47When Iran destabilizes, Russia's club of dictators and shadow fleet operations get weaker,
26:55routes get riskier, money gets nervous, oil prices jump around, and every partner starts
27:03hoarding resources for themselves. That's the opposite of the old Soviet era, when Moscow could spend
27:10a lot of money on the loyal clients because it had a huge system behind it.
27:16Putin doesn't have that system. He has a war, sanctions, and a shrinking margin.
27:21So the relationship with Cuba is tuned down. Moscow offers just enough to keep the door open,
27:28and Havana accepts because it has no luxury of pride. This is why the last illusion needs to die.
27:36Russia is not coming back as Cuba's patron. It simply can't afford such a move.
27:42What we are watching is a relationship between two states that both need the West to survive,
27:49while cursing the West on TV. Now, I want to hear from you, because this is where the story stops
27:56being
27:57history and becomes a forecast. What do you think Trump's next move regarding Cuba could be?
28:04Does he squeeze the fuel line harder, cut the deal quietly, or try to turn Cuba into a public strength
28:13headline? Drop your predictions in the comments and tell me what you are basing it on. Strategy,
28:21domestic politics, or pure instinct? I read the comments.
28:27If you want more long-form analysis like this without panic, without slogans, please like, subscribe,
28:34and share. And if you'd like to support the channel and keep it independent, you can join my think tank,
28:41use PayPal or Superthings, or click the hype button. Every bit helps this reach the people who actually
28:49want depth. See you in the next one.
29:14the channel is almost 20 minutes.
29:15.
29:15.
29:15.
29:15Amen.