Russian tanker shipping oil to Cuba

LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — A sanctioned Russian tanker is shipping more than 700,000 barrels of oil to Cuba as the communist island suffers blackouts under a United States economic blockade, marine trackers indicated on Wednesday.

The Anatoly Kolodkin loaded 730,000 barrels of crude in the Russian port of Primorsk on 8 March and on Wednesday at 1600 GMT was in the eastern Atlantic bound for Cuba, according to maritime analytics firm Kpler.

Its data showed the Russian-flagged vessel, owned by the Russian state shipping company Sovcomflot, was scheduled to unload at the Matanzas oil terminal on the north of the island around 23 March.

Another tanker, the Hong Kong-flagged Sea Horse, loaded nearly 200,000 barrels of diesel in late January off Cyprus from another tanker, according to Kpler data.

It exited the Mediterranean on 13 February and has since been sailing west across the Atlantic, slowing down between late February and early March and following an erratic course, the tracker indicated.

At 1630 GMT on Wednesday it was in the northwestern Caribbean, about 1,500 kilometers from the Cuban coast.

The Anatoly Kolodkin is listed as coming under sanctions against Russia by the US, European Union and Britain.

US President Donald Trump has raised pressure on Cuba after deposing in January its key ally, Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, by enforcing an oil blockade on the island.

Cuba has imported no oil since 9 January, when Mexico delivered a shipment in the days following Maduro’s ouster when Mexico came under pressure from Trump to end such deliveries.

Meanwhile, the first shipment of international aid for crisis-hit Cuba has arrived in the country in the shape of five tons of medical supplies, official sources said Wednesday.

A delegation of around 100 European activists arrived overnight at Havana airport with the aid, which will be distributed to hospitals, the sources said.

The aid activists from several European and Latin American countries as well as Turkey belong to the Nuestra America (“Our America”) flotilla who are out to show their solidarity with the Cuban people.

All told, humanitarian organizations and public figures plan to deliver 20 tons of aid to the island by air and sea to help Cuba through its worst economic crisis in three decades exacerbated by the US capture of Maduro and the cut-off in oil shipments from Venezuela.