For the 33rd consecutive year the United Nations’ General Assembly (UNGA) has voted to adopt a resolution calling for an end to the United States’ economic, commercial and financial embargo of Cuba.
The American trade embargo has been in place since 1960, one year after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, and means that U.S. exports to Cuba and imports from Cuba are prohibited unless subject to special exemptions.
One hundred and sixty-five nations voted in favor of the resolution, twelve nations abstained and seven voted against. The nations opposed to the resolution were the U.S., Israel, Argentina, Paraguay, North Macedonia and Ukraine. Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Costa Rica, Czechia, Ecuador, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Morocco, Poland, Moldova and Romania abstained from the vote.
Although the resolution passed with a convincing majority, the vote was not as decisive as it had been last year, when only two nations (the U.S. and Israel) voted in favor of the embargo and only one nation (Moldova) abstained.
The marginal increase in international support for the American position can likely be attributed to the recent intensification of an American diplomatic campaign to reject or abstain from the resolution.
The U.S. recently urged its diplomats in dozens of countries, especially in European and Latin American nations, to lobby against the resolution. The American administration cited alleged Cuban military support for Russia in the Russo-Ukrainian war as justification for its diplomatic campaign in an internal State Department cable sent to American diplomats.
Although Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel has expressed his admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin and blamed the U.S. and NATO for the war, the Cuban government has repeatedly denied any military involvement in Ukraine.
The Cuban Foreign Ministry also revealed that the Cuban government was pursuing legal action against Cubans engaged in mercenary activity in Ukraine. Nine criminal proceedings have reportedly been initiated against 40 defendants for the crime of mercenarism.
Ukrainian officials estimate that up to 20,000 Cuban mercenaries have been recruited by Russia to fight in Ukraine. The cable sent to American diplomats suggests that that number is closer to 5,000.
This diplomatic tension between the U.S. and Cuba was vocalized when the U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz, gave a speech to the UNGA about the embargo. Waltz lambasted the Cuban government, characterizing it as “the illegitimate Communist regime of Cuba” and calling for the “the civilized world to stop looking away and demand that Cuba provide its own citizens with food, medicine and electricity, end its use of forced labor, and free its 700 political prisoners”.
Image Credit: Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez via X
Mid-speech, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla interrupted Walz with a point of order and called his comments “uncivilized, rude and gross.”
On the same day as the vote (October 29) Ukraine closed its embassy in Havana and the Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha stated that the Eastern European nation would be “downgrading” diplomatic ties with the island because of the number of Cubans fighting on Russia’s side.
Sybiha accused the Cuban authorities of “inaction … in response to massive recruitment of Cuban citizens to the Russian occupation army,” arguing that the “unwillingness of Havana to stop massive deployment of its nationals in the Russian war against Ukraine constitutes complicity in aggression and must be condemned in the strongest terms.”
Featured Image: The results of the UN resolution on the American embargo against Cuba in 2025
Image Credit: Cuba Solidarity Campaign via X
License: Creative Commons Licenses
