I'm John Batchelor. This is the New World Report. I welcome my good colleagues. Ernesto Arousa, former foreign minister

of the Republic of Brazil. He's traveling. He's in Africa. And Alejandro Pina Excluza,

a thinker and writer for the opposition, longtime commentator on the affairs of Venezuela and

Caracas. He's traveling. He's in Europe.

Gentlemen, I begin with a headline, hours old from Reuters.

Trump reverses course on Cuban oil blockade allows Russian tanker to pass.

This is Reuters, subhead.

U.S. President Donald Trump signaled he was reversing course on blocking oil

shipments to Cuba, saying he had, quote, no problem, end quote, with any country sending crude

as a Russian tanker neared a Cuban port with a badly needed shipment. All right, the backstory of

this is straightforward. For many years, decades even,

Cuba was sustained by oil shipments from Venezuela. Those stopped with the Maduro detention

and the new working relationship between Washington and Caracas. Stopped. Now, there have been reports of

oil coming through to private vendors in Cuba, all very unclear. However, this is not

anything low-key. This is Russia sending oil to a country that's out of barrels of oil,

out of fuel oil, out of everything for its electricity

grid. In other words, people in crisis. I come to you, Alejandro, because the oil that Russia

thinks that it's replacing was from Venezuela. How do you measure this separate drama that's going on in Havana, no longer

connected to Caracas, except for in history? Do you measure that allowing the oil through

disposes Cuba to be less intransigent or makes it easier for Cuba to say no to the United

States than a change of direction. Good day to you.

Hello, John. A pleasure to be with you again. I think this amount of oil coming to Cuba from Russia

...