The deputy foreign minister and other guests on Mesa Redonda justify the shooting down of the two Brothers to the Rescue aircraft
14ymedio, Madrid, 21 May 2026 / The United States’ ambivalent strategy toward Cuba has met its match in the island’s Foreign Ministry, which this Wednesday also responded to the same script with a bit of carrot and stick. On the day Washington indicted former president Raúl Castro over the shooting down of the two Brothers to the Rescue aircraft in 1996, Trump toned things down by saying there would be no “escalation”; while the regime, as if mirroring him, launched a furious attack on the judicial measure -above all through Cuba’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Carlos Fernández de Cossío -and held out a hand for dialogue, via Ernesto Soberón in New York.
Cuba’s ambassador to the United Nations spoke with The New York Times this Wednesday and insisted that the regime is willing to implement changes in its economy and Government, as well as wishing to continue negotiations with the United States, although he accuses Washington of acting in bad faith.
Cuba’s ambassador to the United Nations insisted that the regime is willing to implement changes in its economy and Government
“Cuba is willing to talk about everything with the United States. There is no taboo subject in our conversation. On the basis, as I was saying, of reciprocity and equality,” he insisted. Soberón said it was the first time a Government representative had granted an interview to the NYT because he considered it important to tell the American people that Havana wants peace and cooperation, but that statements such as Donald Trump’s “we will take Cuba” do not help.
Soberón Guzmán criticised the message Marco Rubio addressed to the Cuban people this Wednesday, saying that it denies US responsibility for the worsening conditions on the island since the oil blockade was approved at the end of January. “For anyone with the slightest bit of common sense, it is an insult to human intelligence,” he said.
“You don’t have to be a Nobel Prize-winning mathematician to realise that where things are taken out and taken out and nothing is put in, it runs out,” he said in relation to the end of the fuel that arrived aboard the Russian oil tanker Anatoly Kolodkin. Soberón stated that they expect to accept the 100 million dollars in aid offered by the US — which he nevertheless also described as an insult — and that, as confirmed by the recent visit to Cuba by CIA Director John Ratcliffe, cooperation is under way and can continue in areas such as migration, tourism, agriculture, medicine production and the fight against drug trafficking.
However, the diplomat questioned some aspects of the US electoral system — such as the influence of billionaire donors or the distribution of electoral districts. “Is that the democracy they want for Cuba? We are not interested,” he said. In any case, he argued, that is not Washington’s real motivation. “The United States maintains positive relations with various nations that lack democratic systems, so democracy in Cuba is not the reason why the United States is applying this policy,” he concluded.
All those criticisms were, in any event, the conciliatory version. The other one, that of “fierce resistance”, was invoked by Fernández de Cossío on the television programme Mesa Redonda, devoted this Wednesday to responding to the US criminal accusations against Raúl Castro.
The official, who was accompanied by the director of International Law, Yusnier Romero Puente, and the president of Prensa Latina, Jorge Legañoa, denounced the operation as “fraudulent, because it has no legal basis, no political basis, and no moral basis” and said it “must be seen as part of the aggressive, growing escalation” that the US has carried out this year.
The president of Prensa Latina, Jorge Legañoa, denounced the operation as “fraudulent, because it has no legal basis”
“This is not an isolated event; it forms part of that aggressiveness, of a despicable act within that aggressiveness,” he said, in line with what was condensed in an official Government statement and in Miguel Díaz-Canel’s post on social media.
The full programme once again reconstructed the events surrounding the shooting down of the Brothers to the Rescue planes — which it constantly refers to as a terrorist organisation — from the regime’s perspective. The participants reviewed the “more than twenty-five serious and deliberate violations of Cuban airspace” carried out by the group and of which, they stressed, there is graphic evidence: recorded images in which the pilots themselves “boasted of being over Havana and of nothing happening from the military point of view.”
The regime’s second line of argument — and the one it insisted on most — is that the US had evidence that this was happening and did nothing to prevent it, as required by Article 4 of the 1944 Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation. They also brought up again the warning notes sent by the Cuban Government to the US Government, and one by a US aviation official who left it in writing that there was concern in the State Department over “Cuba’s reactions to this flagrant violation.”
With all this, “they took the decision not to act. In other words, there was complicity in that act,” said Fernández de Cossío, who also demanded that the US show the satellite evidence proving that the aircraft were in international waters, ignoring the fact that this has been firmly proven in a report by the International Civil Aviation Organization, which is part of the UN system.
Legañoa, for his part, rhetorically asked what the US would do if someone violated its airspace and said that, in fact, it does just that
Legañoa, for his part, rhetorically asked what the US would do if someone violated its airspace and said that, in fact, it does just that. Without presenting a single example, he answered himself: “It would shoot it down. As has happened on various occasions, including civilian personnel, not military personnel. What has it done? Defend its airspace.” In reality, there is not a single documented case that would allow such a claim to be made. What the US has done, by contrast, is intercept civilian aircraft and force them to land when they violated its airspace. Precisely what Havana did not do.
There was a great deal of going over the events, all of it already known, but the most important part for Havana was to make the obvious clear: the indictment “forms part of a psychological warfare strategy,” although the objective differs depending on who is analysing it. In Miami, it is about applying maximum pressure for change without violence; in Havana, it is about preparing the ground for an invasion.
“The dark practice of the United States of using accusations such as these in order to act militarily against sovereign States is well known. Its shelter is not justice; its shelter is the use of the overwhelming military might possessed by the Government of the United States,” said Fernández de Cossío, who described these actions as “imperial arrogance.”
The officials also lamented Rubio’s video and the date chosen to give the act more symbolism. “What does 20 May mean for Cuban history? Interventionism. The date that marked the establishment of the neocolonial pseudo-republic, under Washington’s tutelage, remains today a symbol used by the anti-Cuban right to set its aggressive agenda against the Revolution,” said Legañoa.
Lastly, the deputy foreign minister considered that the US is trying to resort to “an illegal use of justice for United States political purposes.” All this, after “completely disconnecting Cuba from the international economy and by that route destroying the economy”, so as to present itself as the only alternative by taking advantage of the population’s understandable desperation.
Translated by GH
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