Cuba accepts $100 million US aid offer as country says it has run out of oil

[Zorro]

Source: Tampa Bay Times

Cuba’s leader, Miguel Díaz-Canel, said Thursday that his government will accept a U.S. offer to provide $100 million in humanitarian aid, as the country runs out of fuel and Washington signals its impatience with stalled diplomatic talks between the two countries.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last Friday that the U.S. government had offered to send $100 million in humanitarian aid to the country, but that Cuban authorities had not accepted it. Earlier this week Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez said his government had no knowledge of the offer and accused Rubio of lying.

But after the State Department on Wednesday said the offer was still standing, Díaz-Canel said the Cuban government would not stand in its way.

“If the U.S. government is truly prepared to provide aid in the amounts it has announced—and in full conformity with universally recognized practices for humanitarian assistance—it will encounter neither obstacles nor ingratitude on the part of Cuba, however inconsistent and paradoxical such an offer may seem to a people whom that very same U.S. government systematically and ruthlessly subjects to collective punishment,” Díaz-Canel wrote in a posting on X.

The State Department said the aid could be distributed by the Catholic Church and other reliable independent humanitarian organizations. Rubio discussed the aid delivery in a meeting at the Vatican with Pope Leo XIV last week.

Read more: https://www.tampabay.com/news/nation-world/2026/05/15/cuba-oil-us-aid-marco-rubio/