On September 5, 2026, a 91-meter-long cargo ship named "Grace" was sailing between Cuba and Mexico with a cargo of fuel. It was unarmed. It was not carrying drugs or weapons. It was not violating any UN Security Council resolutions. Nevertheless, the US Coast Guard intercepted it, boarded it, and escorted it to Puerto Progreso, Mexico, where a Mexican Navy inspection team confirmed what they already knew: there was fuel in the ballast tanks and in several containers.
Coast Guard Commander Admiral Kevin Lunday celebrated this “success” with a line borrowed from a Western movie sheriff: “Dark Fleet actors who employ deceptive tactics to engage in illicit activities will not evade justice.”
Justice? What justice is the admiral talking about? The kind that comes from an executive order signed by a president who has openly declared his goal is to change the government of Cuba? Because that's not what we're saying here at A Contragolpe . That's what Reuters said in its October 2nd dispatch: "The Trump administration has openly declared its goal is to change the government of Cuba. The oil embargo imposed by the United States earlier this year has put the country under severe strain as it grapples with fuel shortages and blackouts exacerbated by failing infrastructure."
There is no ambiguity. No half measures. No forgiveness. No compassion for the suffering people. No conscience. The United States government has declared, without batting an eye, that its policy toward Cuba is regime change. And to achieve this, it has deployed an economic warfare machine that includes the oil blockade, the pursuit of ships in international waters, and pressure on third countries to submit to its dictates. All of this, of course, outside the bounds of international law.
Because what right does the United States have to intercept a ship carrying fuel to Cuba? None.
International law, enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), establishes that international waters are an area of freedom of navigation. No State may intercept, board, or detain a vessel flying another flag on the high seas, except in very specific cases such as piracy, the slave trade, drug trafficking, or statelessness. The transport of fuel to Cuba is not included in that list.
To impose a naval blockade—which is what the United States is doing de facto—a UN Security Council resolution is required. No such resolution exists, since Cuba has not been sanctioned by the UN. There is no international legal instrument prohibiting one country from buying oil from another. What exists is a unilateral executive order, signed by a president who has decided that international law is an obstacle to his geopolitical ambitions.
However, it seems that for that administration, transporting fuel to Cuba is a clandestine activity. René González, Hero of the Republic of Cuba and an authoritative voice on the United States' actions, says, "We would have to examine which provisions of international maritime law make it a crime for a nation to access fuel without having been sanctioned by the UN." The question hangs in the air, and no one in Washington dares to answer it.
The most grotesque aspect of the Coast Guard statement is its use of the term "international controls." As if the interception of a vessel in international waters by a single power, without a UN mandate or agreement with the flag state, constituted "international control." It doesn't. It is a unilateral act of force. It is piracy, in the most classic sense of the term, since it involves the use of force by a state to seize property that does not belong to it, in waters that do not belong to it, on a vessel that does not belong to it.
And this is not an isolated case. The same article mentions the detention of the "Jaira Provider," "another vessel that did not comply with regulations and which, earlier this summer, was discovered to be transporting illicit fuel destined for Cuba." The "ghost fleet," "evasive tactics," "illicit trafficking"—the entire vocabulary is designed to criminalize what is nothing more than legitimate trade between sovereign nations. Cuba has the right to buy fuel. Any country has the right to sell it. The fact that the United States does not authorize it does not make that transaction a crime.
Amid this aggression, defenders of the blockade argue that Cuba imported 1.67 million barrels of oil from the United States in the first half of 2026, which, they claim, proves that the oil blockade doesn't exist. This is a fallacy that doesn't withstand serious scrutiny.
According to statements by the Minister of Energy and Mines of Cuba, the country needs eight monthly shipments of fuel, similar to the one left by the Russian ship "Anatoly Kolodkin" last March in the port of Matanzas, which was carrying approximately 370,000 barrels.
This means that Cuba needs approximately 35.04 million barrels of oil in six months. What the Cuban private sector has been able to purchase in the United States represents only 4.8% of that need. The remaining 95.2% has not been able to enter the country.
President Miguel Díaz-Canel confirmed this on the radio program "Shared Criterion." "It's been nine months since a fuel shipment arrived in this country. How can the economy be sustained? How can people work under these conditions? How can all the services the population needs be provided? How can production be increased?"
Nine months without a fuel tanker. And meanwhile, the U.S. Coast Guard patrols the Caribbean waters, intercepting ships, escorting them to foreign ports, and seizing their cargo. All this, according to Admiral Lunday, to ensure that "the actors of the dark fleet do not evade justice." Justice, in this case, is Washington's name for its right to plunder.
The objective of these actions is none other than to provoke a social explosion in Cuba. The logic is evil, cruel, genocidal, but simple. If the country is economically strangled to unbearable levels, if fuel is prevented from entering the country, if energy infrastructure is destroyed, if financial transactions are blocked, then the desperate people will rise up against their government. And that uprising, real or fabricated, will justify a “humanitarian intervention” to put an end to the “regime.”
It's the same recipe being used in Iran, where the war of aggression seeks regime change. And it's the same recipe being used against Cuba for more than sixty years, with the difference that now the blockade is total, comprehensive, and without exception.
International law prohibits collective punishment. Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that “no protected person shall be punished for offenses he or she has not personally committed.” The blockade against Cuba is collective punishment that violates this principle because it affects the entire population—children, the elderly, women, the sick—for the alleged transgressions of our government. And the interception of ships in international waters is a further violation of freedom of navigation and the right to trade.
Faced with this scenario, the only possible response is resistance. The same resistance that has sustained Cuba for 67 years. The same resistance that has allowed the Cuban people to survive nine months without a fuel shipment. The same resistance that has made it possible for the island to remain standing despite the blockade, building its own future with its own hands.
This is not about denying the difficulties. The situation is extremely serious. Blackouts are prolonged, transportation is paralyzed, hospitals are operating with generators that depend on the same scarce fuel, and production is plummeting. But the Cuban people know who is responsible. And they also know that surrender is not an option. Because if history has shown anything, it is that empires do not stop for the weak. They only stop for those who resist.
