MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Trump claims he will engineer a “turnaround” in Cuba and pull it away from China and Russia

“I think we are going to turn it around,” Trump replied when asked about the possibility of Cuba leaning toward the United States

US President Donald Trump on Friday said his administration will bring the Cuban government to align with Washington and pull away from the orbit of China and Russia, in his first public comments on the island since the unprecedented visit by CIA Director John Ratcliffe to Havana on Thursday. The remarks, delivered during an interview with journalist Bret Baier on Fox News, come in a week marked by contradictory US gestures toward the Cuban regime: the humanitarian offer of USD 100 million accepted by Havana, the judicial pressure on former president Raúl Castro, and the opening of a direct channel between US and Cuban intelligence services.

“I think we are going to turn it around,” Trump replied when asked about the possibility of Cuba leaning toward the United States and distancing itself from Beijing. The president praised the role of Secretary of State Marco Rubio in the Cuban dossier and said he was confident in limiting the influence of global rivals on the island. The remarks come hours after Trump returned from his state visit to Beijing, where he addressed with Xi Jinping a broad agenda that included Iran, Ukraine, and the Korean Peninsula.

The Central Intelligence Agency on Friday formalized through an official communiqué the details of Ratcliffe's trip to Cuba. According to the text, the head of the agency traveled to Havana to hold direct talks with authorities of the Interior Ministry and senior officers of the Cuban intelligence services, meetings during which they addressed issues related to intelligence cooperation, regional security, and the island's economic situation. The US delegation met with Raúl Rodríguez Castro, grandson of former president Raúl Castro and security adviser to the regime, as well as with Interior Minister Lázaro Álvarez Casas.

The visit coincides with US press reports, circulated this week by CBS and the Reuters news agency, on the possibility that the federal justice system will bring a criminal case against Raúl Castro, 94, over the 1996 shootdown of two civilian aircraft of the Brothers to the Rescue organization, in which four volunteers were killed. The potential indictment, which requires grand jury approval, builds on an investigation that the Florida attorney general announced in March he intended to reactivate.

Since January, Washington has maintained an oil blockade on Cuba imposed in the wake of the capture of deposed Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. The measure has triggered an unprecedented energy collapse on the island, with blackouts of up to 30 continuous hours, shortages of food and fuel, and the circulation of internal alerts about the possible activation of “Option Zero,” an extreme rationing plan inherited from the Special Period of the 1990s.