Cuba Suffers Nationwide Blackout After Total Grid Collapse Amid U.S. Fuel Blockade

Cuba suffered a nationwide blackout on Monday after its national electrical grid suffered a total collapse, with the UNE power utility saying there was "a total disconnection from the national electricity generation system" while it investigated the cause.

The blackout left Havana residents without power as the grid could only meet 1% of the capital's demand, according to Devdiscourse, and it was the eighth blackout on the island since late 2024, according to TRT World.

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Cuba’s energy crisis has been worsened by an effective U.S. blockade on fuel shipments, with KRDO reporting that Cuba’s energy ministry said the national electrical grid had suffered a total collapse and that emergency "microsystems" were activated to power vital services.

TRT World tied the outage to a U.S. fuel blockade that followed a January cut off of oil supplies by U.S. President Donald Trump, and it described the blackout as the third nationwide power outage since the start of the year.

In the midst of the darkness, TRT World quoted Meyboll Font, a 51-year-old self-employed social media community manager, saying, "Living like this is agony."

Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz-Canel criticized the U.S. on X for blocking fuel imports, claiming Washington is trying to induce "a social explosion through asphyxiation," as KRDO reported.

In response to the pressure, Cuba’s Minister of Foreign Trade and Investment Oscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga told CNN that the humanitarian crisis amounts to "a genocide," while KRDO also reported that a spokesperson for the US State Department described Cuba’s reforms as "modest, long overdue and ultimately superficial smoke signals."

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TRT World reported that Trump pointed to the U.S. overthrow of Venezuela's socialist president Nicolas Maduro and installation of a Washington-friendly successor as a potential blueprint for what he would like to achieve in Cuba.

The Guardian described the same UNE statement on X—"There has been a total disconnection from the national electricity generation system"—and quoted Meyboll Font again saying, "Living like this is agony," as the blackout became the third nationwide outage since the start of the year.

Euronews reported that the Ministry of Energy and Mines said there had been "no failures in the units operating at the time of the grid collapse" and that it opened an investigation while teams tried to restart thermoelectric plants.

The outage deepened strains across essential services, with KRDO saying the energy crunch has strained essential services including education, transportation and medicine, and with TRT World warning that food, drinking water and medicine are in increasingly short supply.

“Cuba suffers a new general power outage this Monday, the third in less than six months and the eighth since the end of 2024, according to the national electricity company”

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TRT World said the United Nations warned of a humanitarian emergency, and it described transport coming to a near standstill as the island’s power cuts continued.

KRDO reported that last month Cuba’s National Assembly approved a broad set of reforms aimed at opening its economy, and it said the foreign trade minister told CNN that the measures were not passed in response to external pressure.

The U.S. dismissed the reforms as "superficial smoke signals" in TRT World, while KRDO reported that US and Cuban officials held multiple talks over the past few weeks.

Euronews reported that state media said electricity was restored for 5% of Havana’s residents, about 42,000 people, and for several hospitals, while warning that the circuits restored so far could fail again.