When Russia's invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, 2022, Cuban viewers who do not read Granma or Cubadebate, or watch the Noticiero Estelar (newscast) learned of the carnage being wrought in Europe when they tuned in to Tele Rebelde, "The sports channel in Cuba," and noticed something strange during the broadcast of Spanish Soccer League (La Liga) matches.
While Barcelona or Real Madrid (the teams with the most fans on the island) were playing, in the top left corner the screen, next to the score, a dark band covered the message "No To The Invasion," and the Ukrainian flag, which the original broadcast included in solidarity with the invaded country.
The official channel, controlled, like the rest of the media by the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), first covered up the message of protest with the channel's name, and later with a black graphic, something that did not go unnoticed by people on the island.
Some viewers and social media users criticized the censorship, calling it "shameful." "In addition to being pathetic, I imagine it's illegal," Rafa wrote on Twitter, while others condemned the Cuban sports commentators' silence, as they ignored the players' minutes of silence and other gestures in support of Kiev.
Cubans know that something like this is no coincidence. The PCC Central Committee's Ideological Department, which oversees the official press, radio and television (the only legal ones in Cuba) decides the content of these media, especially with regard to international relations. This is why there one will never hear how about the people of North Korea really livem or that the dictator Daniel Ortega has prohibited NGOs and closed universities in Nicaragua.
In April of 2022, more than two months after the invasion began, Cubans realized that Kiev's official news site, Ukrinform, one of the main sources of information about Ukraine, founded in 1918, was blocked on the island.
Ironically, weeks prior the regime's Unión de Periodistas de Cuba (UPEC: Union of Cuban Journalists) called Europe's decision to block the Russian state media sources Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik a "violation of sacred rights," after they were accused of spreading disinformation about the war in Ukraine and subjected to western sanctions.
"It seems that the same UPEC, which threw a fit over the censorship of Russian media in Europe and the United States, didn't hear about Cuba's censorship of the main Ukrainian news agency. There is no solidarity by the UPEC with Ukraine and its media," Cuban professor and political scientist Alexei Padilla Herrera stated on his Facebook wall.
Despite this, in a statement the UPEC claimed to uphold freedom of expression in the face of what it described as Washington's "one-sided story." In a text entitled "Disinformation is a crime against culture," the regime's journalism organization indicated that "disconnecting Russia from the world's communication platforms, banning its news media, condemning journalists for not joining the Russophobia that has been unleashed, is, at the very least, a violation of consecrated rights."
By then it was evident that something was wrong with the Cuban regime's alleged logic: despite its supposed neutrality, after openly supporting the invasion, its propaganda apparatus then promoted Moscow's narrative on the war, as it still does today.
The media that disseminate information in Cuba about the events in Ukraine are, therefore, Russia Today, in Spanish; Telesur and Sputnik, sources whose reports are reproduced in print in Granma, Cubadebate and others. In these outlets Kiev's version of events are ignored.
Meanwhile, Havana voiced its support in multilateral organizations for peace and a negotiated solution to the matter, claimed its neutrality in relation to it, abstained in two votes on the conflict at the UN, and called the invasion a "special military operation" by Moscow, echoing the Kremlin's disinformation.
At the same time, the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MINREX) issued a statement asserting that "Russia has the right to defend itself."
Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded with a diplomatic note of protest. In a tweet published in three languages, Emine Dzheppar, Deputy Minister of the European country's ministry, expressed its "strong protest over the Government of Cuba's statements in support of Russia's aggression against Ukraine" and called on Havana to "urge Russia to end this aggression."
The evidence of the Cuban regime's open support for the Russian invasion of its neighboring country is not limited to symbolic spaces. Just hours before the beginning of the conflict, activist Pablo Enrique Delgado Hernández appeared at the diplomatic headquarters of Kiev in Havana to deliver a bouquet of flowers to express solidarity with the people of that country.
On his Twitter profile he later complained that agents of the state company SEPSA, charged with the security of the diplomatic headquarters, held him there.
"Diplomat Iryna Bylik had to make an appearance, because they wouldn?t allow me to hang (on the fence, on the ground, or even on a tree in front of the headquarters) a small bouquet of roses I'd brought as a sign of my solidarity," he added.
After these events Delgado Hernández was arrested by State Security, taken to the National Revolutionary Police's (PNR) Station Seven, and interrogated, according to the complaint.
Days earlier several activists published an open statement of solidarity with the Ukrainian people, signed by more than 300 people. In it, the signatories distanced themselves from the regime and decried "an imperialist war that seeks to further destabilize a nation that has the right to self-determination."
Havana's voting history in the UN General Assembly and other multilateral organizations since March 2022 may be viewed. The Cuban regime is one of the few governments that did not endorse the main resolutions condemning the Kremlin in the UN General Assembly in 2022: it abstained from voting in March of that year (demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine); in October (against the annexation of the occupied Ukrainian regions), and in February 2023 (in support of a "comprehensive, just and lasting" peace in Ukraine).
It also opposed the November 2022 resolution requiring Russia to pay reparations to Ukraine for damages caused during the military operation, and in April of the same year abstained when the United Nations Human Rights Council voted overwhelmingly in favor of extending the mandate of a panel investigating possible war crimes committed since Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
In May of 2023 it voted against a World Health Organization (WHO) resolution in support of the Ukrainian health system and condemning attacks on Ukrainian health facilities by Russia.
All the while, Miguel Díaz-Canel, Manuel Marrero, Army Corps General and FAR Minister Álvaro López Mierta;,Interior Minister General Lazaro Alberto Alvarez Casas, as well as almost all the other ministers, traveled to Moscow, signed strategic agreements with the Kremlin, and welcomed in Havana Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the shady Nikolai Pátrushev, secretary of the Russian Security Council, as well as the Russian Navy's warship Perekop.
Despite all the above, the MINREX still insisted earlier this month that "Cuba is not part of the war in Ukraine," even after the presence of hundreds of Cubans hired as mercenaries by the Russian Armed Forces was made public; recruited via social networks on the island, they were enticed by the promise of obtaining residency in that country and receiving a salaries unimaginable for everyday Cubans.
Havana's far-fetched explanation was that this massive recruitment of Cubans was carried out by members of a "human trafficking" network that, the authorities later claimed, had been arrested and were being criminally prosecuted.
All of the above belies the Cuban regime's attempts to portray itself as an actor uninvolved in the conflict being waged in Europe. Whether its was intentional, or due to negligence, the sudden flow of Cuban men with tickets paid from Russia, traveling as tourists in groups between last July and August, many of them with newly issued passports, could not have gone unnoticed by the authorities.
Even if all of the above were not enough, it would be enough to note the words of Oleksander Merezhko, president of the Ukrainian Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, who wrote on Twitter, in a response to statements by Havana's ambassador in Moscow approving the presence of mercenaries from the island under the Kremlin's orders: "The Cuban regime is not opposed to its citizens participating in Russia's criminal war of aggression against Ukraine. This means that they support it. In light of this statement, democratic states should sever their diplomatic ties with Cuba."