Cuba turns to former ally Russia to tackle fuel crisis - BBC News

Now, for the past few months, Cuba has been in the grips of a crippling

fuel

crisis

. People on the island have had to endure long lines for gas, as well as widespread power outages. Now the Cuban leadership has turned to an old

ally

to help ease the

crisis

. Russia from Havana, our correspondent will grant reports, it is difficult enough for Cuban taxi driver Jorge Yoro to keep his Soviet-era pantry on the road. Replacement parts are scarce and expensive, but recently even filling the tank became a one-day ordeal over the past month due to gasoline shortages. In Cuba it became so serious that at its peak the lines at the gas pumps stretched for several city blocks.

Thousands of waiting customers organized themselves into WhatsApp groups. Jorge is number 426 and they have just told him that it is his turn, but at the gas station the tanker has not arrived. It came and no one knows when it was largely due to driver frustration. There are many problems with this system. It has not been well designed. If Cuba's latest challenge has been

fuel

, then signs of gasoline pumps must be placed in the context of other important ones. The challenges that the island has faced in recent years in terms of food security, inflation, electricity supply, must feel to the beleaguered Cuban people as if the country is simply lurching from one crisis to another, expelling an entire generation of young people from the worst economic conditions since the 1990s, the root of the problem.

Cuba's problems are a potent combination of government mismanagement, global economic recession and the decades-long U.S. embargo to alleviate the situation. The Cuban State recently signed new agreements with Russian companies in sectors ranging from tourism and agriculture to energy. The island's leaders hope Russia can provide some of the crude oil that socialist

ally

Venezuela can no longer afford amid the war in Ukraine, although some economists see closer ties with Russia only as a short-term solution while put out fires on several fronts, Russia is coming to shore up this unstable situation, but the problem is in the medium term because they are not Soviet companies that give government loans, they are private Russian companies that will demand the return of their investment after a suffocating day of wait Jorge was finally able to fill his tank his ladder continues For a little while longer, just like these classic cars, the Cuban Revolution also dates back to the 1950s, but now both are running on fumes and struggling to maintain momentum without a significant review in the coming years, BBC News Havana will grant.