Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at the Trump administration’s push for major reforms in Cuba, Russia’s heaviest bombardment of Kyiv this year, and South Africa’s resurfaced “Farmgate” scandal.
‘Fundamental Changes’
U.S. CIA director John Ratcliffe traveled to Havana on Thursday to personally deliver a message from President Donald Trump. “The United States is prepared to seriously engage on economic and security issues, but only if Cuba makes fundamental changes,” a CIA official told Fox News.
Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at the Trump administration’s push for major reforms in Cuba, Russia’s heaviest bombardment of Kyiv this year, and South Africa’s resurfaced “Farmgate” scandal.
‘Fundamental Changes’
U.S. CIA director John Ratcliffe traveled to Havana on Thursday to personally deliver a message from President Donald Trump. “The United States is prepared to seriously engage on economic and security issues, but only if Cuba makes fundamental changes,” a CIA official told Fox News.
For months, the Trump administration has pushed for regime change in Cuba as part of the White House’s larger “Donroe Doctrine.” “I don’t think we’re going to be able to change the trajectory of Cuba as long as these people are in charge in that regime,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday.
Washington has long designated Havana as a state sponsor of terrorism. In January, Trump accused Russia and China of operating intelligence posts out of Cuba, though both countries denied the claim. Meanwhile, the United States has increased its own military and intelligence reconnaissance flights around the island to prepare for a larger U.S. military buildup in the region. “What is happening in Cuba is unacceptable, and it is a threat to the U.S. to have a failed state 90 miles from our coast,” Rubio said on Friday.
Ratcliffe’s trip to Havana signaled growing U.S. interest to ramp up Trump’s regime-change ambitions. Its timing was also noteworthy, as it came just hours after Havana announced that it had run out of fuel due to the United States’ ongoing energy blockade of the island.
“We have absolutely no fuel oil, absolutely no diesel,” Cuban Energy Minister Vicente de la O Levy said. “In Havana, blackouts now exceed 20-22 hours.” Locals have reported using charcoal or wood for cooking, and the resulting blackouts have sparked protests in the capital.
For more than two years, Cuba has grappled with a severe energy crisis, though the situation has worsened following recent U.S. intervention in Latin America. In January, U.S. forces seized Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and took control of Caracas’s oil industry. This operation completely stopped the flow of Venezuelan crude into Cuba. Later that month, Trump imposed a blockade barring all foreign oil from reaching Havana.
“This dramatic worsening has a single cause: the genocidal energy blockade to which the United States subjects our country, threatening irrational tariffs against any nation that supplies us with fuel,” Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel wrote on X on Wednesday.
The United States offered Cuba $100 million in humanitarian aid on Wednesday on the condition that Havana agrees to “meaningful reforms.” Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla accused Washington of lying about the assistance, prompting Rubio to blame the Cuban regime for not distributing the aid. But Díaz-Canel has since rejected these accusations, writing on Thursday that any U.S. aid “will encounter no obstacles or ingratitude from Cuba.”
Meanwhile, U.S. federal prosecutors in Miami are reportedly working to secure an indictment of former Cuban President Raúl Castro, who remains an influential figure in Havana. The scope of the charges is unclear, but officials suggest that they could include drug-trafficking allegations as well as accusations tied to Cuba’s downing of U.S. humanitarian planes in 1996.
Ratcliffe, as the highest-ranking Trump administration official to visit Cuba, met with Castro’s grandson, Raúl Rodríguez Castro, while in Havana on Thursday. Ratcliffe also met with Interior Minister Lázaro Álvarez Casas and the head of Cuba’s intelligence services.
Today’s Most Read
What We’re Following
Kyiv seeks revenge. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed retribution on Friday for a Russian missile strike on an apartment building in Kyiv that killed at least 24 people, including three children. “Ukraine will not allow any of the aggressor’s strikes that take the lives of our people to go unpunished,” Zelensky wrote on X after holding a meeting to discuss retaliatory long-range attacks. “We are entirely justified in our responses against Russia’s oil industry, military production, and those directly responsible for committing war crimes against Ukraine and Ukrainians.”
Thursday’s strike occurred during Russia’s heaviest bombardment of Ukraine’s capital this year, and it came just hours after a three-day, U.S.-mediated cease-fire expired, though both sides have accused each other of violating that truce. The timing of Russia’s attack “demonstrates again that they are definitely not interested in any kind of peace discussions right now,” said Gaël Veyssière, the French ambassador to Ukraine.
Moscow has denied deliberately targeting civilians. However, throughout the Russia-Ukraine war, Russian strikes have hit civilian population centers and critical energy infrastructure. Zelensky declared a day of national mourning on Friday for the 24 killed civilians; Thursday’s attack was one of the deadliest on Kyiv since the war began in February 2022.
“Farmgate” resurfaces. South Africa’s ruling African National Congress gave its “full and continued support” for President Cyril Ramaphosa on Friday in the wake of revived impeachment proceedings against him. Having his party’s backing bolsters Ramaphosa’s chances of surviving renewed efforts to remove him from office over the 2020 “Farmgate” scandal.
Ramaphosa was elected in 2018 on an anti-corruption platform. However, in early 2020, he became the subject of his own corruption scandal after at least $580,000 in foreign cash was stolen from his personal game ranch. The large sum, hidden in a sofa, appeared to not have been declared for taxes. Ramaphosa has denied any wrongdoing; however, critics have questioned how the funds were acquired, why they were stuffed inside furniture instead of held in a bank, and why Ramaphosa did not report the theft to police until a political rival accused him of concealing the incident.
In 2022, Parliament blocked impeachment proceedings against Ramaphosa. But last Friday, South Africa’s Constitutional Court ruled that lawmakers were wrong to do so. And on Monday, the lower house said that its speaker plans to establish a body to investigate the scandal—exposing Ramaphosa once again to an impeachment trial. That day, Ramaphosa said he will not resign, and he pledged to challenge an independent panel’s report that cited preliminary evidence of alleged misconduct.
Canceled U.S. deployment. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth abruptly canceled the deployment of 4,000 U.S. troops to Poland on Thursday, without citing a reason. Acting Defense Department press secretary Joel Valdez said the move was “not an unexpected, last-minute decision,” and Polish Deputy Defense Minister Pawel Zalewski told local media on Thursday that Warsaw had received assurances that “the Americans do not plan to systematically reduce the U.S. presence in Poland.”
Still, the announcement has left Poland—and the rest of Europe—reeling. Two weeks ago, the Pentagon said it will withdraw 5,000 U.S. troops from Germany after German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that Iran had “humiliated” the United States. The move was part of what appears to be a larger realignment of U.S. forces in Europe, as Trump stresses that the continent needs to take on greater responsibility for its own security amid the White House’s growing ire toward NATO allies over their perceived lack of support for U.S. actions against Iran.
There are currently around 7,400 U.S. personnel in Poland and roughly 68,000 active-duty troops in Europe overall. The Polish-U.S. alliance remains “durable and lasting,” Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, Poland’s defense minister and deputy prime minister, said on Friday. “Poland continues to be the most stable American ally in Europe.”
What in the World?
U.S. President Donald Trump arrived in Beijing on Wednesday for a state visit. Who was the first sitting U.S. president to visit China?
A. Lyndon B. Johnson
B. Richard Nixon
C. Gerald Ford
D. Jimmy Carter
Odds and Ends
Paris’s Musée d’Orsay unveiled a permanent gallery last week that features 13 iconic works by some of the world’s most renowned artists, including Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, and Auguste Rodin. But unlike the museum’s other exhibits, the purpose of this space is not just for viewing. The museum is asking visitors to help determine who are the rightful owners of these pieces, all of which were stolen or sold under duress in France during World War II. The display is a direct response to criticism that French authorities have been too slow to return looted artwork to their original owners.
And the Answer Is…
B. Richard Nixon
Nixon’s 1972 trip was transformative, but official visits between the two countries’ leaders tend to be fairly routine—although Taiwan remains a reliable flash point, FP’s James Palmer reports in China Brief.
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