It has long been said—perhaps with some embellishment—that Fidel Castro admired Abraham Lincoln, and that his revolution against Batista was not, at its inception, conceived as a Marxist project. Rejection, more than doctrine, may have shaped what followed. Turned away, Castro turned elsewhere, and found in the Soviet Union not only a patron, but a framework.
Cuba remains, in form, a Communist state, though one that has—over time and necessity—admitted certain market tendencies at the margins.
Today, the island enters another period of strain. Infrastructure, long deferred, is giving way. Sanctions have tightened. And most critically, fuel has become scarce. For decades, Cuba relied heavily on imported oil—much of it from Venezuela and, more recently, Mexico. That flow has now been sharply curtailed, in part through U.S. pressure on suppliers and restrictions on shipments.
Into that vacuum steps Russia.