Cuba’s Díaz-Canel vows to resist US pressure to resign as President Trump intensifies threats and tightens oil blockade on Cuba.
Published April 10, 2026
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel says he will not bow to U.S. pressure to resign.
“Resignation is not part of our vocabulary,” he said in an interview with NBC News on Thursday.
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The president described communist-ruled Cuba as a “free and sovereign nation” with the right to “self-determination,” adding that the island “does not submit to the agenda of the United States.”
“People in leadership positions in Cuba are not elected by the U.S. government,” he said.
Since 2018, the president has faced increasing pressure and demands to transition from President Donald Trump’s administration.
President Trump suggested Cuba could face the same fate as Venezuela and Iran.
“I created this great army. I said, ‘You’ll never have to use it.'” But sometimes you have to use it. And then Cuba is next,” the US president said last month.
Cuba’s main oil supplies were cut off after President Trump ousted Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro in January. Since then, the United States has imposed an oil blockade on the island and threatened to impose tariffs on countries that sell oil to Cuba.
“hostile policy”
Díaz-Canel blamed the “hostile policies” of the United States, which has left Cuba reeling from widespread power outages, fuel shortages and disrupted water and food distribution.
He also said the Trump administration “deprived the American people of normal relations with Cuba.”
Since returning to office last year, President Trump has called Cuba an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to U.S. national security and threatened to “take over” the island.
The current tensions date back to the Cold War, when the United States took a hostile stance against left-wing governments across the Americas.
The Cuban revolution of the 1950s led to the overthrow of the U.S.-backed military regime. By the early 1960s, Washington had imposed a comprehensive embargo aimed at weakening revolutionary leader Fidel Castro.
“We cannot betray Cuba”
Despite US pressure, Russia remained a close ally of Cuba.
“We cannot betray Cuba. That is out of the question. We cannot leave Cuba alone,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said at a news conference in Havana on Friday.
Last month, a Russian-flagged tanker carrying 730,000 barrels of oil entered Cuba, its first arrival in the country in three months.
