Justice For The Cuban People On The Fourth Anniversary Of The July 11 Protests
Four years ago, thousands of Cubans peacefully took to the streets to demand a future free from tyranny. The Cuban regime responded with violence and repression, unjustly detaining thousands, including over 700 who are still imprisoned and subjected to torture or abuse.
Today, the Department of State is taking steps to implement President Trump's strengthened Cuba policy outlined in National Security Presidential Memorandum-5 from June 30, 2025. In solidarity with the Cuban people and the island's political prisoners, the United States is designating key regime leaders under Section 7031(c) for their involvement in gross violations of human rights. We are also taking steps to impose visa restrictions on numerous Cuban judicial and prison officials responsible for, or complicit in, the unjust detention and torture of July 2021 protestors.
In addition, the Department is updating the Cuba Restricted List and the Cuba Prohibited Accommodations List to include 11 regime-linked properties, including the new 42-story 'Torre K' hotel, to prevent U.S. funds from reaching the island's corrupt repressors.
The U.S. will continue to stand for the human rights and fundamental freedoms of the people of Cuba, and make clear no illegitimate, dictatorial regimes are welcome in our hemisphere.
The designations of Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, López Miera, Álvarez Casas, and their immediate family members are made under Section 7031(c) of the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2024 (Div. F, P.L. 118-47), as carried forward by the Continuing Appropriations Act, 2025 (Div. A, P.L. 119-4). The steps to impose visa restrictions on Cuban officials are taken under Section 212(a)(3)(C) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
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Otago Daily Times
31 minutes ago
- Otago Daily Times
Ukraine war: Putin, unfazed by Trump, will fight on: sources
Russia's President Vladimir Putin intends to keep fighting in Ukraine until the West engages on his terms for peace, unfazed by Donald Trump's threats of tougher sanctions, and his territorial demands may widen as Russian forces advance, three sources close to the Kremlin say. Putin, who ordered Russian troops into Ukraine in February 2022 after eight years of fighting in country's east between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian troops, believes Russia's economy and its military are strong enough to weather any additional Western measures, the sources said. Trump on Monday expressed frustration with Putin's refusal to agree a ceasefire and announced a wave of weapons supplies to Ukraine, including Patriot surface-to-air missile systems. He also threatened further sanctions on Russia unless a peace deal was reached within 50 days. The three Russian sources, familiar with top-level Kremlin thinking, said Putin will not stop the war under pressure from the West and believes Russia - which has survived the toughest sanctions imposed by the West- can endure further economic hardship, including threatened United States tariffs targeting buyers of Russian oil. "Putin thinks no one has seriously engaged with him on the details of peace in Ukraine - including the Americans - so he will continue until he gets what he wants," one of the sources told Reuters on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation. Despite several telephone calls between Trump and Putin, and visits to Russia by US special envoy Steve Witkoff, the Russian leader believes there have not been detailed discussions of the basis for a peace plan, the source said. "Putin values the relationship with Trump and had good discussions with Witkoff, but the interests of Russia come above all else," the person added. Asked for a comment on the Reuters reporting, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly blamed former President Joe Biden for allowing the war to erupt during his administration. "Unlike Biden, President Trump is focused on stopping the killing, and Putin will be faced with biting sanctions and tariffs if he does not agree to a ceasefire," she said. Putin's conditions for peace include a legally binding pledge that NATO will not expand eastwards, Ukrainian neutrality and limits on its armed forces, protection for Russian speakers who live there, and acceptance of Russia's territorial gains, the sources said. He is also willing to discuss a security guarantee for Ukraine involving major powers, though it is far from clear how this would work, the sources said. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said Ukraine will never recognise Russia's sovereignty over its conquered regions and that Kyiv retains the sovereign right to decide whether it wants to join NATO. His office did not respond to a request for comment for this story. A second source familiar with Kremlin thinking said that Putin considered Moscow's goals far more important than any potential economic losses from Western pressure, and he was not concerned by US threats to impose tariffs on China and India for buying Russian oil. Two of the sources said that Russia has the upper hand on the battlefield and its economy, geared towards war, is exceeding the production of the US-led NATO alliance in key munitions, like artillery shells. Russia, which already controls nearly one-fifth of Ukrainian territory, has advanced some 1415 square km in the past three months, according to data from the DeepStateMap, an open-source intelligence map of the conflict. "Appetite comes with eating", the first source said, meaning that Putin could seek more territory unless the war was stopped. The two other sources independently confirmed the same. Russia currently controls Crimea, which it annexed in 2014, plus all of the eastern region of Luhansk, more than 70% of the Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, and fragments of Kharkiv, Sumy and Dnipropetrovsk regions. Putin's public position is that those first five regions – Crimea and the four regions of eastern Ukraine - are now part of Russia and Kyiv must withdraw before there can be peace. Putin could fight on until Ukraine's defences collapse and widen his territorial ambitions to include more of Ukraine, the sources said. "Russia will act based on Ukraine's weakness," the third source said, adding that Moscow might halt its offensive after conquering the four eastern regions of Ukraine if it encounters stiff resistance. "But if it falls, there will be an even greater conquest of Dnipropetrovsk, Sumy and Kharkiv." Zelenskyy has said Russia's summer offensive is not going as successfully as Moscow had hoped. His top brass, who acknowledge that Russian forces outnumber Ukraine's, say Kyiv's troops are holding the line and forcing Russia to pay a heavy price for its gains. TRUMP AND PUTIN The United States says 1.2 million people have been injured or killed in the war, Europe's deadliest conflict since the Second World War. Neither Russia nor Ukraine give full figures for their losses, and Moscow dismisses Western estimates as propaganda. Trump, since returning to the White House in January after promising a swift end to the war, has sought to repair ties with Russia, speaking at least six times by telephone with Putin. On Monday, he said the Russian leader was not "an assassin, but he's a tough guy." In an abrupt break from his Democratic predecessor Joe Biden, Trump's administration has cast the war as a deadly proxy conflict between Russia and the United States, withdrawn support for Ukraine joining NATO and floated the idea of recognising Russia's annexation of Crimea. Putin portrays the war as a watershed moment in Moscow's relations with the West, which he says humiliated Russia after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union by enlarging NATO and encroaching on what he considers Moscow's sphere of influence, including Ukraine and Georgia. Putin has yet to accept a proposal from Trump for an unconditional ceasefire, which was quickly endorsed by Kyiv. Recent days have seen Russia use hundreds of drones to attack Ukrainian cities. However, Trump told the BBC in an interview published on Tuesday that he was not done with Putin and that a Ukraine deal remained on the cards. The first source rejected Trump's assertion last week that Putin had thrown "bulls***" around, saying there had been a failure to transform positive talks with Witkoff into a substantive discussion on the basis for peace. A White House official said on Monday Trump was considering 100% tariffs on Russian goods as well as secondary sanctions on other countries that buy its exports as a means to drive Moscow to the negotiating table. China and India are the biggest buyers of crude. Despite existing sanctions and the cost of fighting Europe's biggest conflict since World War Two, Russia's $US2 trillion ($NZ3.35 trillion) economy has performed far better than many in Russia or the West expected. The economic ministry forecasts a slowdown to 2.5% annual growth in 2025 from 4.3% last year. The second person said that Trump had little leverage over Putin and suggested that even if Washington imposed tariffs on the purchasers of Russian crude then Moscow would still find a way to sell it to world markets. "Putin understands that Trump is an unpredictable person who may do unpleasant things but he is manoeuvering to avoid irritating him too much," the source said. Looking ahead, one of the sources said there was likely to be an escalation of the crisis in coming months, and unscored the dangers of tensions between the world's two largest nuclear powers. And, he predicted, the war would continue.
RNZ News
4 hours ago
- RNZ News
Trump tries to rewrite history on being 'fooled' by Putin
By Aaron Blake , CNN Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Photo: Jacquelyn Martin/AP/Gavriil Grigorov/Pool/AFP/Getty Images via CNN Newsource Analysis: It remains to be seen just how lasting and severe President Donald Trump's turn against Vladimir Putin will be. Trump has criticised the Russian president in unprecedented terms in recent days and signalled he'll send vital weapons to Ukraine . But he's also given Putin plenty more time - 50 days - before really dropping the hammer with economic punishment. To the extent this shift is genuine, though, it's coming with a healthy dose of rewriting history. Repeatedly this week, Trump has suggested he never really trusted Putin. "He's fooled a lot of people," Trump said on Monday at the White House, adding: "He fooled Clinton, Bush, Obama, Biden. He didn't fool me." The president echoed the point in a new interview with the BBC . Asked whether he trusted Putin, he reportedly paused for a bit. "I trust almost nobody, to be honest with you," he eventually responded. That pause would seem instructive. In fact, Trump has repeatedly vouched for Putin over the years and even in recent months, despite all the evidence undermining his credibility. Just five months ago, Trump said he did trust Putin on the most central of issues - whether he wanted peace in Ukraine. Trump now suggests the Russian president isn't serious about that prospect. "I believe he wants peace," Trump said on 14 February , adding: "I mean, I know him very well. Yeah, I think he wants peace. I think he would tell me if he didn't… I trust him on this subject." It was a pretty stunning and full-throated testimonial for the former KGB officer. Two weeks later, Trump was asked about the prospect of Putin violating the terms of any deal that might be reached - something Putin has done plenty of times done before . He dismissed the idea. "I think he'll keep his word," Trump said, before suggesting he had an affinity with Putin because both had to endure the Russia investigation during his first term. And asked by Time magazine in April whether Putin could make peace, Trump signalled it was likely. "I think Putin will" make peace, he said . The US president is singing a very different tune today. In fact, he said on Monday that on three or four occasions, he felt they had a deal in place, only for Putin to pull the rug out from beneath them and continue to hit Ukraine hard. (Despite these comments, Trump has opted to give Putin more time before implementing secondary sanctions on countries that buy Russian oil.) The administration's trust in its negotiations with Putin was also what set off February's Oval Office blow-up with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky . After Vice President JD Vance signalled the administration preferred "diplomacy" to chest-thumping, Zelensky interjected to ask Vance whether Putin could be trusted to actually engage faithfully in talks. US President Donald Trump and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky meet in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, 28 February, 2025. Photo: SAUL LOEB / AFP "We signed ceasefire" in 2019, Zelensky said. "Ceasefire. All of them told me that he will never go [into Ukraine]. We signed him with gas contract - gas contract, yes, but after that, he broken [sic] the ceasefire, he killed our people, and he didn't exchange prisoners. We signed the exchange of prisoners, but he didn't do it." Zelensky continued: "What kind of diplomacy, JD, you are speaking about?" Vance called it "disrespectful" for the Ukrainian leader to litigate this issue in front of the media, and things quickly went off the rails. Ultimately, Trump was asked in that meeting what happens if Putin violates the terms of a ceasefire, and he again blanched at the suggestion. "'What if' anything?" Trump said. "What if a bomb drops on your head right now, OK? What if they break it? I don't know. They broke it with Biden because Biden, they didn't respect him. They didn't respect Obama. They respect me." Four-and-a-half months later, Trump says Putin tells him very nice things during their phone calls but doesn't back that up with actions. "I go home, I tell the first lady, 'You know, I spoke to Vladimir today, and we had a wonderful conversation,' " Trump said on Monday. "She said, 'Oh really? Another city was just hit.' " And this is a familiar tale. Trump has often vouched for adversarial foreign strongmen who have very different agendas, and sometimes that's blown up in his face. Early in 2020, Trump repeatedly vouched for China and President Xi Jinping's control over the Covid outbreak. He dismissed the idea that China was covering up the spread and praised its transparency, reportedly rejecting the idea that he should apply more pressure. Trump made these comments despite China's history of covering up such events and internal administration concerns that it was happening again. Soon, when the outbreak took hold in the United States, Trump would turn to blaming China for it. The White House accused China of the same cover-up Trump had cast doubt upon. Vladimir Putin. Photo: AFP / Pool / Maxim Shemetov Trump has also repeatedly defended Putin in the past, particularly his denials of Russian interference in the 2016 US election. He has even sided with Putin over his own intelligence community. During a press conference with Putin in Helsinki, Finland, in 2018, Trump said he didn't "see any reason why" Russia would have interfered . "I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today," Trump said. He later claimed he had misspoken and that he meant to say he didn't see any reason why Russia wouldn't have done this. But the president has gone on to repeatedly cast doubt on the idea that Russia interfered, even as a bipartisan Senate investigation backed up the intelligence community's findings. Another politician might look at all this and ask themselves whether they invested too much faith in Xi and Putin. But Trump instead suggests that it's other American presidents who have been the dupes. If you look closely, though, you can see Trump tacitly acknowledging his own miscalculation. He has repeatedly pointed to how Putin says nice things but then doesn't stand by them. Even in his anecdote about the first lady, Trump cast himself as seemingly too focused on the things Putin says to him rather than actions on the ground. It's normal in diplomacy to say nice things about your counterparts, even if you don't believe them. But usually you do that a lot more with allies than adversaries. On some level, you're lending your credibility and legitimacy to someone who might not reward it. In Putin's case, there was plenty of reason to believe that might ultimately be the case. And here we are. - CNN
NZ Herald
6 hours ago
- NZ Herald
Ukraine ‘shouldn't target' Moscow: Trump
Donald Trump stated Ukraine should not target Moscow and has no plans to supply long-range missiles. Photo / AFP Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech. Donald Trump stated Ukraine should not target Moscow and has no plans to supply long-range missiles. Photo / AFP Donald Trump says Ukraine should not target Moscow and that he had no plans to supply Kyiv with long-range missiles, following a report the US leader had encouraged President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to hit the Russian capital. The Financial Times reported that Trump had brought up a potential counter-offensive with Zelenskyy and even asked his Ukrainian counterpart whether he could hit Moscow, if Washington provided long-range weapons. Asked by reporters at the White House if Zelenskyy should target the Russian capital, Trump replied: 'No, he shouldn't target Moscow'. He was also asked if he was willing to supply Ukraine with long-range missiles and said: 'No, we're not looking to'. Citing two people familiar with the call, the Times reported that Trump spoke to Zelenskyy on July 4, a day after talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
