Trump's oil blockade is bringing Cuba to its knees

At the start of this year, Donald Trump ordered the capture and removal of Venezuela's president Nicolas Maduro - he's now facing a trial in New York.

Trump then endorsed the newly compliant Delcy Rodriguez to run Venezuela, took control of the country's oil business, and crucially, set up an oil blockade of Cuba.

In doing so, he indicated that Cuba was now on his list of countries he intends to "deal with".

Iran, already on that list, has recently been at the centre of the president's attention, but all the indicators are that Cuba is most certainly "next".

We know this because Trump has said so.

In reality, the oil blockade is already bringing Cuba to its knees.

Venezuela provided cheap fuel to Cuba, and it was augmented by supplies from Mexico.

These vital lifelines have both stopped on Trump's orders, though Mexico maintains it was a "sovereign decision".

A single Russian oil tanker has reached Cuba this year, but that is for now, all the oil it has received.

Cuba has failed to diversify its power supplies - there's little solar power, little wind power, and very little gas - making it particularly reliant on oil to the point that now it can barely function.

I've recently been inside Cuba, and the effects of the blockade are devastating and immediately obvious.

This oil blockade is an economic war every bit as destructive as bombs and bullets.

There are continuous power blackouts across the country, and now also in the capital Havana, which was traditionally spared this type of treatment.

Government food stores and bakeries selling heavily subsidised household essentials are now regularly closed or virtually empty.

Many Cubans relied on these stores to buy food to survive - and not having this vital supply means there is a growing crisis, with people going hungry.

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Petrol stations are largely closed and empty, pharmacies are bare, and people are queuing to get money from cash machines that are often drained and always come with a strict withdrawal limit.

The tourism industry that once brought billions of dollars of hard currency to Cuba has almost come to a standstill.

Trump's threats, the blackouts, and a lack of aviation fuel have scared tourists away, particularly in Havana.

The traditional safety nets in Cuba, like its healthcare system, have broken. Hospitals are running on generators with very little supplies.

Charities are doing their best to pick up the slack with food handouts for the elderly and the homeless - they say they're now also handing out food to children and trying to help with education.

But they're struggling to find the resources, struggling to keep up with the demand and the need.

Rubbish is piled up on the streets all over the capital, and that's mainly because there's no fuel for the bin trucks to collect it.

I watched as people picked through the rotting food and vegetables in the rubbish, looking for something to eat - sometimes eating it where they stood. In alleyways nearby we filmed as people slept rough.

Countless people I spoke to told me that even though Cuba is a poor country, seeing this type of thing was not common here in the past - this was not how it used to be.

But these types of images have now become a constant visual reminder of how every facet of life in this Caribbean country is being affected by the blockade and Donald Trump's threats.

The once magnificent buildings that marked Havana out as a special place in the region are crumbling, even completely falling apart in places. People still live in these monuments to Cuba's past; they're clinging to a way of life that is disappearing.

A charity director I spoke to, who is also a tour guide mainly for Italian visitors, explained it to me this way: when her clients see Havana's disintegrating buildings, they ask her when the war was that brought this destruction about - there hasn't been a war, she has to explain.

Observers, neutral or otherwise, agree that people can't go on living like this and that Cuba needs help.

So far, Trump and his advisers have shown little regard for the fate of the Cuban population.

His promise that Cuba is next means nothing to the average person, because they don't know what next means, and here many doubt that the president or anyone in the White House knows what next means either, or if there is even a plan for a future in Cuba.

(c) Sky News 2026: Trump's oil blockade is bringing Cuba to its knees