Ten million people left without power in latest of outages that sparked violent protest last weekend
Cuba’s national electric grid has collapsed, the country’s grid operator has said, leaving approximately 10 million people without power amid a US-imposed oil blockade that has crippled the island’s already obsolete generation system.
The grid operator, UNE, said on social media on Monday that it was investigating the causes of the blackout, the latest in a series of widespread outages that last for hours or days and that last weekend sparked a rare violent protest in the communist-run country.
The US has ratcheted up pressure this year on its longtime foe Cuba since capturing the Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro – Cuba’s most important foreign benefactor – in January. The US president, Donald Trump, cut off Venezuelan oil shipments to Cuba and threatened to put tariffs on any country that sold oil to Cuba, strangling the Caribbean island’s already antiquated grid.
Cuba said on Friday that it was in talks with the US with the hope of defusing the crisis. Trump has said in recent weeks that Cuba is on the verge of collapse and is eager to make a deal with the US.
