Oliver Conway

The message to the president from the protests, there are no quick fixes anymore.

They're calling for much more.

And that report by our chief international correspondent, Lise Doucette.

When US forces seized the Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro just over a week ago, many of those killed trying to protect him were from Cuba.

Venezuela has a long-standing alliance with the island nation and supplies it with an estimated 35,000 barrels of oil a day.

Donald Trump says he's putting an end to that, urging the communist authorities in Cuba to, quote, make a deal before it's too late.

Cuba's president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, has hit back with this post on X, read out by one of our producers.

More details on the dispute from our diplomatic correspondent Paul Adams in Washington.

Donald Trump has made one very trenchant observation, which is that Cuba is heavily dependent on Venezuelan support, specifically oil.

And with America assuming control of Venezuelan oil, that support is gone.

Cuba is losing around a third of what it relies on from outside contributors.

So that could have a very dramatic effect.

Some observers are suggesting it could be catastrophic for the Cuban economy and lead to power cuts and food shortages and all sorts of difficulty.

And of course, that is exactly what Donald Trump wants.

He wants to batter communist Havana into submission to make some kind of deal.

What that deal is, he doesn't say.

But for Cuban Americans, influential people like the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, they want to see the release of political prisoners, the holding of free and fair elections.

Frankly, they want to see an end to the Cuban revolution started, led by Fidel Castro in the 1950s.

Now, the Cuban president, President Diaz-Canel, has said that Cuba is free, independent, and sovereign.

No one tells us what to do.