Trump says he has 'no problem' with Russian oil tanker bringing relief to Cuba despite blockade

ABOARD AIRFORCE ONE (AP) — President Donald Trump on Sunday night said he has “no problem” with a Russian oil tanker off the coast of Cuba delivering relief to the island, which has been brought to its knees by a U.S. oil blockade.

“We have a tanker out there. We don’t mind having somebody get a boatload because they need … they have to survive,” Trump told reporters as he flew back to Washington.

When asked if a New York Times report that the tanker would be allowed to reach Cuba was true, Trump said: “I told them, if a country wants to send some oil into Cuba right now, I have no problem whether it’s Russia or not.”

On Monday, Russia's Transport Ministry said the oil tanker Anatoly Kolodkin arrived at the Cuban port of Matanzas carrying “humanitarian supplies” of about 730,000 barrels of oil.

The vessel is sanctioned by the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom following the war in Ukraine.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday that Russia had previously discussed its oil shipment to Cuba with the United States. “Russia сonsiders it its duty not to stand aside, but to provide the necessary assistance to our Cuban friends,” he told reporters.

Trump, whose government has come at its Caribbean adversary more aggressively than any U.S. government in recent history, has effectively cut Cuba off from key oil shipments in an effort to force regime change. The blockade has had devastating effects on the civilians Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio say they want to help, leaving many desperate.

Islandwide blackouts have roiled Cubans already grappling with years of crisis, and a lack of gasoline and basic resources has crippled hospital and slashed public transport.

Experts say the anticipated shipment could produce about 180,000 barrels of diesel, enough to feed Cuba’s daily demand for nine or 10 days.

Cuba has long been at the heart of geopolitical tug-of-war between the U.S. and Russia, dating back decades. Trump on Sunday dismissed the idea that allowing the boat to reach Cuba would help Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“It doesn’t help him. He loses one boatload of oil, that’s all it is. If he wants to do that, and if other countries want to do it, it doesn’t bother me much,” Trump said. “It’s not going to have an impact. Cuba’s finished. They have a bad regime. They have very bad and corrupt leadership and whether or not they get a boat of oil, it’s not going to matter.”

He added: “I’d prefer letting it in, whether it’s Russia or anybody else because the people need heat and cooling and all of the other things.”

Associated Press reporters Megan Janetsky contributed to this report from Mexico City and Andrea Rodríguez contributed from Havana.

A man fill containers with potable water during a blackout in Havana, Sunday, March 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

Activists from the vessel Maguro, that arrived from Mexico, unload solar panels and other humanitarian aid from the "Nuestra America," or Our America convoy, at the port in Havana Bay, Cuba, Tuesday, March 24, 2026. (Jorge Luis Banos/IPS via AP, Pool)

People spend the night in the dark on the Malecon during a blackout in Havana, Cuba, Saturday, March 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A Mississippi judge set a $5 million bond Monday for a third man charged in the death of a Black woman whose body was found hanging from a tree in August.

Police disclosed Friday that Tasia Fortune, 29, was killed in a drug dispute before her body was placed in a tree behind an abandoned house in Jackson.

Fortune was Black, and the discovery of her hanging body stoked fear because the scene recalled actual lynchings in the Southern state, which has a long history of racial violence. Some officials had called for a federal civil rights investigation before a Jackson police detective said the scene was “staged.”

“People justifiably didn’t know if we had a killer on the loose who might hang people for racial reasons,” Judge Jeffery Reynolds said Monday.

He said it was a “heinous” act that shocked the state capital.

Reynolds presided at a hearing for Eric Clark, 45, who turned himself in Friday. The Hinds County Public Defender’s Office, which is representing him, declined to comment. Clark and two other men charged in Fortune’s death are Black.

Later outside the court, Fortune’s mother, Christy Spivey, said Clark approached her at the courthouse last week and hugged her following a hearing for co-defendant Jarques Ratliff.

“He never said he did it, but he said he was there to turn himself in for murder,” Spivey told reporters Monday.

The body was discovered in a tree on Aug. 3. Jackson Police Chief RaShall Brackney said props were left at the scene “as part of the staging” of Fortune's death and that more arrests were likely.

Brackney told reporters that she believes the case has been conflated with that of Nolan Wells, an 18-year-old Black college student whose July 4 disappearance from an island off Mississippi’s Gulf Coast caused speculation that his death could have been racially motivated.

A Mississippi grand jury said it found no evidence of criminal conduct in Wells' death. His family and its legal team have slammed the report and are working to keep the investigation open.

“This has created even more damage in our communities,” Brackney said, referring to the fear that the image of Fortune’s hanging body evoked. “We know we have a very sordid history around lynchings and racial terror across this nation and particularly around the South. That is still a very current narrative. It is still a very raw narrative.”

AP writer Ed White in Detroit contributed.

Christy Spivey poses with a portrait of her late daughter, Tasia Fortune, on Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2026, in Marion, Ky. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)