Cuba is running out of time. With petroleum reserves estimated at fewer than 20 days' supply and oil imports at zero for the first time in a decade, the communist island faces its gravest crisis since the Soviet Union's collapse. And the allies it had long counted on are proving as reliable as its fleet of stuttering Soviet-era generators.

A nefarious alignment of events was unleashed on January 3, when US forces removed Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro from power, whisking him away from Caracas in the middle of the night to face narcoterrorism charges in New York. Since former president Hugo Chávez kindled a special relationship with fellow strongman Fidel Castro in the late 1990s, Venezuela had been Cuba's dominant oil supplier, accounting for roughly 58% of petroleum imports as recently as 2023.

When the Trump administration ordered Caracas's new interim government to halt energy shipments to Havana, the island's already fragile energy infrastructure went into freefall. Mexico, which by some estimates had overtaken Venezuela as Cuba's primary supplier in 2025 at roughly 20,000 barrels per day, delivered one final cargo on January 9 before suspending shipments after President Donald Trump threatened tariffs on any country supplying oil to the island. January 2026 ended with Cuba recording its first month of zero oil imports since 2015.

More than 80% of Cuba's electricity comes from ageing Soviet-made oil-fired thermal plants, many of which now sit idle. Satellite imagery analysed by Bloomberg shows nighttime light levels in major eastern cities such as Santiago de Cuba and Holguín have fallen as much as 50% against historical averages. Hospitals have curtailed surgical procedures, tourist resorts have been shuttered during peak season, aviation authorities have warned international airlines that jet fuel is unavailable, and the government has cut the working week to four days. Havana's streets are piling up with uncollected rubbish as fuel-dependent municipal services grind to a halt.

Against this backdrop, Cuba's ostensible allies in Moscow and Beijing have doled out declarations of solidarity carefully calibrated to cost them nothing.

Russian President Vladimir Putin told Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla on February 18 that Moscow would "always" stand by Havana, denouncing US oil restrictions as "unacceptable.” But he stopped well short of any concrete commitment. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov urged Washington to "show common sense" over what he called a "military-maritime blockade," while Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia would "provide appropriate assistance" without caring to specify what that might entail.

A humanitarian fuel shipment has been mooted by Russia's Havana embassy, though no timeline was offered, and Ambassador Viktor Coronelli recalled that every year, through its contribution to the World Food Programme, Moscow supplies Havana with various food products “and will continue to do so.” Yet food parcels will not keep Cuba's power grid running.

The threat facing any would-be oil supplier is not merely economic: much of the massive US naval presence built up in the Caribbean during the second half of last year to pressure Maduro remains in place, and Washington has already demonstrated its willingness to intercept vessels it deems in violation of its oil quarantine.

The deterrent effect is tangible. In late January, a petrochemical tanker, the Mia Grace, departed Lomé, Togo, carrying what analysts believe was several hundred thousand barrels of diesel or fuel oil destined for Havana, reportedly purchased by Cuban state company Cubametales through a European intermediary.

The African token of solidarity never arrived. Midway through its Atlantic crossing, the vessel quietly altered its destination to the Dominican Republic. No shots were fired, no boarding took place, but the mere prospect of US reprisals was enough. Any captain willing to run oil to Havana would be doing so with the US Navy on the horizon and Washington's sanction threats in mind.

That Moscow has done little to counter this pressure should surprise no one. The Kremlin's rhetoric deserves to be weighed against one inglorious recent precedent. When US forces abducted Maduro – who was protected, according to US officials, in part by Cuban intelligence operatives and Russian-made defence systems that failed to prevent the operation – Moscow's response was limited to diplomatic condemnation.

Russia watched on as its Venezuelan energy interests were sidelined and its ally removed, and did nothing of consequence. Russian oil companies have since been pushed out of Venezuelan operations, eliciting little more than whining from the Kremlin.

The historical record on Russian oil supplies to Cuba is similarly instructive. While Russia was the dominant supplier during the Soviet era, recent deliveries have been sporadic at best: occasional significant cargoes, such as a roughly 90,000-tonne shipment in 2024, but no reliable supply chain. Russia, heavily sanctioned over its invasion of Ukraine, conducts minimal trade with the United States, and Peskov acknowledged as much when asked about escalation risks: "We don't want an escalation, but on the other hand, our trade with the United States is almost nonexistent." That calculus changes nothing for Cuba's empty fuel depots.

China's posture is, if anything, more telling. Ever careful to couch its positions in the language of non-interference, Beijing's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian has pledged that China would "always provide support and help" to Cuba and "firmly supports Cuba in safeguarding national sovereignty and security," but declined to specify what form assistance would take.

The reason for that vagueness is not hard to discern: unlike Russia, China has extensive trade exposure to the United States and would face severe consequences for defying Washington's tariff threats. Crucially, China has not historically been a direct oil supplier to Cuba at all, a fact that renders its expressions of support largely academic. Beijing's bilateral trade with Havana reached $2.1bn in 2023, encompassing solar panels and consumer goods, but crude oil is conspicuously absent from the ledger.

Across Latin America the picture is equally discouraging for Havana, as the region increasingly lurches to the right. Of the few remaining left-wing governments, Mexico has sent two navy vessels carrying food, hygiene products and other humanitarian supplies, with President Claudia Sheinbaum pledging a further 1,500 tonnes of aid, while simultaneously confirming oil deliveries remain "on hold" to avoid US tariffs.

Chile's outgoing President Gabriel Boric pledged $1mn in assistance, a gesture his president-elect successor, far-right Trump ally José Antonio Kast, has already vowed to roll back. Brazil and Colombia condemned US pressure in vigorous diplomatic language but announced no material support. Venezuela's acting president Delcy Rodríguez – whom Trump has called a "terrific person" and who assumed power after Maduro's removal – was reportedly asked by US Energy Secretary Chris Wright to distance Caracas further from Havana, and subsequently halted humanitarian shipments and suspended new contracts for Cuban medical personnel.

The "brotherly" Chavista regime that once dispatched tens of thousands of heavily subsidised barrels a day to Cuba now takes its cues from Washington and seems to be facilitating a phased transition to save its skin. Something of the kind may soon be playing out in Cuba. Washington, as US envoy Mike Hammer hinted, already has its own “Delcy Rodríguez” lined up in Havana.

The pattern that emerges is consistent and damning. The countries and blocs that present themselves as counterweights to US hegemony – Russia with its axis-of-resistance rhetoric, China with its Global South diplomacy, the Latin American left with its anti-imperialist tradition – have shown that when confronting actual US economic and military might, the costs of solidarity rapidly exceed the benefits. Russia is already paying a heavy price for its Ukraine adventure and, with peace talks now tentatively under way, has every incentive to stay in Washington's good graces and no appetite for a confrontation over a Caribbean island it can barely reach. China is engaged in delicate trade negotiations with Washington and will not sacrifice market access for Havana. Mexico needs the US economy far more than it needs vaunting unfashionable ideological credentials.

Washington, meanwhile, is moving on multiple fronts simultaneously. Secretary of State Marco Rubio – the first US-born Cuban to hold the post and a known anti-socialist neocon hawk – is overseeing backchannel discussions with Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, grandson of former leader Raúl Castro, in what officials describe as an effort to identify a negotiated pathway to political transition, echoing the approach taken with Venezuela before January's operation.

Cuba's besieged leadership now knows it is in a bind. Breaking with years of defiance, President Miguel Díaz-Canel has signalled openness to dialogue with Washington while simultaneously approving plans to shift the country towards a “state of war” posture, laying bare a contradiction that suggests Havana understands the severity of its predicament even if it has no obvious means of escaping it. The regime survived the Soviet collapse in the 1990s through extreme austerity, but Cuba was still able to import fuel during that decade-long crisis. It cannot do so now.

The revolutionary island has stoically endured six decades of crippling US sanctions through ideological conviction, Soviet-era infrastructure and subsidised oil from sympathetic neighbours. The first factor remains. The second is crumbling. And the third, stripped away in a matter of weeks, is not coming back, whatever Moscow and Beijing say to the contrary.

Marco Cacciati is the Latin America editor at bne Intellinews.