I'm John Batchel in Havana, with Professor Evan Ellis of the U.S. Army War College.

Complete non-transparency.

Guessing game.

However, Reuters within these hours reports this.

Trump says U.S. and Cuba are in negotiations on unspecified deal.

Raul Castro's grandson reported to be in talks with Marco Rubio.

Cuba's government says no talks underway, but does not deny back channel.

And when it comes to secret diplomacy, Castro family connections matter.

Professor, I'm not supposed to understand any of this.

It sounds to me like rumors of rumors.

Where are they going? What is it the U.S. wants? What is it the Cuba wants?

It's a great question, John. Well, first of all, recognizing that Cuba is in really dire economic

straits and really on the verge, if not already, in a humanitarian catastrophe. The cutoff of oil,

which used to come from Venezuela into a degree from Russia and to a lesser degree from Mexico,

was critical to making up essentially the 60,000 barrel per day deficit that Cuba had.

Now, Cuba is extra dependent on that oil because virtually all of its

electricity generation comes from petroleum-fired systems. And so you run out of petroleum,

you not only run out of the fuel for the trucks to get food to market and other things,

but you also make the power situation worse. The Cuba power plant was

already in dire straits. It was old. So every time they started running low on power, that would just

cause nationwide collapses. And so you have a country without power for basic things like

refrigerators, without gas, to get things to market. So basically, the entire economy has virtually been shutting down.

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