Sandy Acosta

This tanker is basically just a bandaid on an aging energy infrastructure that is basically the government's own doing to itself.

Cuba's energy system basically runs near the edge of total collapse on a daily basis.

Two and a half years ago, they had total blackouts.

They had a total countrywide blackout a few weeks ago.

This tanker is basically just a bandaid on an aging and abandoned infrastructure of energy infrastructure that is basically the government's own doing to itself.

From my analysis, it'll basically take them three to seven days to process through their refineries.

It's Russian crude, which is a lot easier for them to process than Venezuelan crude.

And then they'll distribute it out probably a week or so after that, prioritizing their failing medical system, which doesn't provide much anyway to the poor Cuban people, and prioritizing their own facilities.

You've got reporting on all fronts, even amongst civil society leaders on the island, basically saying this is not a fix.

This is this is just a test of, you know, by the Russians on the Trump administration.

And that it also may be a way of getting in some kind of either intelligence gathering information or, you know, utilizing the oil shipments, which the Russian media has said is all, you know, in favor of supporting humanitarian needs for their ally.

But the reality is there could be all sorts of other than various things hiding behind that.

I think to some extent it might be demonstrating a way of showing that they're willing to negotiate and that they mean business, that they're not going to let up on the hard stuff, and that there need to be some serious concessions.

They mentioned 51 political prisoners being released.

There are no names.

No one knows.

There hasn't been any real movement towards that.

Are they serious?

And so I think we're at the beginning of a next phase of this conversation between the US, Cuba, and Russia, this nice three-part conversation.