US hits Cuba with new sanctions as island’s crises deepen

WASHINGTON — The United States on Thursday issued sanctions against a grandson of former Cuban leader Raul Castro and five state-linked entities, the latest salvo in Washington’s crippling pressure campaign against the communist-led Caribbean island.The US State Department said it was sanctioning Fidel Ernesto Castro, 31, for being an adult family member of other sanctioned members ‌of the ‌Castro family.His 95-year-old grandfather Raul Castro ‌was a foundational figure of the 1959 Cuban revolution and led the country from 2006 when his brother, Fidel Castro, fell ill. He served as president until 2018 but continued to wield significant influence in government.Washington also issued sanctions on the Banco Exterior de Cuba, ‌a state-owned bank, ‌and two companies involved in Cuba’s nickel mining industry ‌and another two companies active in Cuba’s ‌struggling energy sector, including Cuba’s Oil Industry Supply Import Company (Abapet). Abapet is responsible for importing special equipment and spare parts needed to sustain Cuba’s crumbling power grid.The US has since early this year imposed a blockade on Cuban access to oil, threatening ‌tariffs on countries that continue to ship supplies there.This has exacerbated an already weak power grid, causing repeated nationwide blackouts and further limiting the transport of goods and people’s access to healthcare. The sanctions aim to push Cuba’s critical machinery offline and exacerbate its energy crisis, said Brett Erickson, a sanctions expert and managing principal at Obsidian Risk Advisors, a consulting firm.“The US is trying to really tighten the screws as much as possible,” he said.“The Trump administration seems to have no seriousness to accept any change from Cuba other than a toppling of the regime. Marco is not going to let that go,” he added, referring to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.Erickson anticipated that Cuba’s government would try to circumvent the sanctions “because they have to.”“They’ll get creative in how they try to procure these maintenance parts,” he said, warning it would be a costlier alternative, which in turn would raise inflation and further hurt Cuba’s economy.Islandwide blackouts have become increasingly common, while daily outages in Cuba now surpass 24 hours as the aging grid fails and fuel reserves dwindle ever since Trump threatened in late January tariffs on any country that sells or provides oil to the island.The United Nations has warned this could trigger a humanitarian crisis on the island. Cuban authorities detailed plans in late July to open up key sectors of its economy to private industry in a bid to survive the US sanctions.