Cuba deepens crisis amid grid collapse and US genocide accusation
Cuba has accused the United States of orchestrating a genocide as the island faces a worsening humanitarian and economic emergency. The allegation comes as Cuba has been hit by an island-wide power outage after the total collapse of its national electricity grid. The blackout has deepened already severe shortages of fuel, medicine and water, while daily life in the capital and beyond has been thrown further into disarray.
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The supporting report says the Cuban government made the accusation through state-run media outlets more than 100 days after Donald Trump first said he would focus on Havana once the Iran war had ended. It also says the White House increased pressure on Cuba with an executive order on 29 January that cut off the island's critical energy supplies. According to the report, the result has been daily mass blackouts, disrupted public transport and problems distributing essential food items.
The crisis is being felt across basic services. Hospitals are described as being on the verge of collapse, while doctors struggle to reach overwhelmed facilities because public transport is unreliable. Bakers are reported to be working 24-hour shifts followed by a single day off, and families are waking as early as 4am to cook food before it spoils during intermittent power cuts.
Homes without running water and streets cluttered with rubbish have added to concerns about mosquito-borne disease. The situation matters because it is not only an energy failure but a broader breakdown in public health, food access and transport. Cuba's authorities say the United States is largely responsible, while the report also points to sanctions and economic mismanagement as factors behind what experts describe as a standstill in the country's health, humanitarian and economic sectors.
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The scale of the disruption suggests the electricity collapse is amplifying an already fragile system rather than creating a crisis from scratch. The report says Cuba's regime has approved the largest package of reforms since Fidel Castro came to power in 1959 in an effort to revive the economy. That detail underlines how serious the pressure has become for the government, which is trying to stabilise a system facing repeated shocks.
The reforms appear to be part of a wider attempt to respond to shortages and restore confidence, although the article does not specify how quickly they may take effect. Old Havana is presented in the report as a symbol of the wider hardship, with empty streets and pharmacy shelves that are mostly bare. Human Rights Watch is identified in the supplied material as the source of the image from the capital, and the report uses that visual evidence to illustrate the scale of the shortages.
The picture it paints is of a country where routine tasks such as cooking, travelling to work and obtaining medicine have become increasingly difficult. The accusation of genocide also raises the diplomatic stakes. It reflects the depth of hostility between Havana and Washington and shows how Cuba is framing the crisis in political as well as humanitarian terms.
The report does not provide a response from the United States, and it is not clear from the supplied material whether the accusation has been formally repeated through diplomatic channels or only in domestic state media. What remains unclear is how long the grid collapse will last, whether the reforms will ease the shortages, and whether the pressure from sanctions will intensify further. The report also does not say when electricity supplies might stabilise or how quickly hospitals and transport services can recover.
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For now, the key issue is whether Cuba can restore basic services before the humanitarian strain becomes even more severe.
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