Russia seeks to help Cuba after running out of jet fuel, with tourists stranded

Moscow.- Russia is seeking solutions together with the Cuban authorities and will do everything possible to help with the airport crisis and facilitate the return of Russian tourists, said this Monday the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, after Havana announced that it has run out of fuel for airplanes.

"Both through diplomatic channels and other ways, we maintain intense contacts with our Cuban friends," Peskov stated in his daily telephone press conference, noting that "the situation in Cuba is truly critical."

He added that "these suffocating measures by the United States really generate great difficulties for the country" and assured that Moscow and Havana are studying "possible ways to solve these problems, or at least, alleviate them". According to the press service of the Russian Tourism Industry Union, as reported this Monday, around 4,000 Russian tourists are currently in the Caribbean nation and all scheduled flights are operating normally.

The day before, the Cuban government warned international airlines operating on the island that as of this Monday the country would run out of aviation fuel due to the US oil siege, as EFE was able to confirm with two sources.

The official NOTAM (notice to airmen) message from the Cuban authorities to pilots and controllers specifies that the kerosene deficit affects all international airports in Cuba. The validity period of the notification is for one month, from February 10th to March 11th.

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The announcement may affect the already battered national tourism sector, stranded in a crisis since the pandemic due to the consequences of COVID-19, US sanctions, and the country's economic problems, which weigh down the quality of the offer and service. The U.S. President, Donald Trump, signed a presidential order on January 29th that threatened tariffs on those countries that supplied oil to Cuba, after alleging that the island was a national security threat to his country. Cuba produces barely a third of its energy needs. For the rest, it resorted to imports from Venezuela (which in 2025 accounted for around 30% of the total) and, to a lesser extent, from Mexico and Russia.