Cuba reacts: Indictment of Raul Castro is pretext for U.S. attack on the island

Sarah Moreno, Miami Herald on May 20, 2026

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The Cuban government, reacting to the indictment in Miami on Wednesday of Raúl Castro in the shoot-down of two unarmed planes over the Florida Straits in 1996, ramped up the accusatory rhetoric against the United States and called the federal charges a pretext for a military attack against the island.

“This is a political action, with no legal basis, that only seeks to beef up the case they’re manufacturing to justify the folly of a military aggression against Cuba,” said Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel.

At the same time, Díaz-Canel seized the moment to once again blame U.S. sanctions for the severe crisis facing the island, calling them “a collective punishment” of the Cuban people.

“Now they cynically say there is no oil blockade against Cuba, that everything our people suffer is the fault of the Cuban government,” he said. “The blame lies with those who ordered all access to material and financial resources to be closed... Remove the blockade and we’ll see how we fare.”

The U.S. Justice Department announced the indictments of Raúl Castro and five others on Wednesday at an event in Miami’s Freedom Tower. The charges rest in part on an audio recording of Castro ordering the Cessna planes to be shot down; those aircraft carried U.S. citizens Armando Alejandre, Carlos Costa, Mario de la Peña, and U.S. resident Pablo Morales. They all died in the attack.

In a further sign of the Cuban government’s refusal to acknowledge its own failures, Díaz-Canel and Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez also launched fierce attacks against U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. In a video posted on X Wednesday morning addressing the Cuban people, Rubio, himself the child of a Miami Cuban family, pointed to the control exerted by the GAESA., the military conglomerate that runs much of Cuba’s economy, as responsible for the severe crisis Cuba is undergoing.

Rubio singled out GAESA as “a state within a state, which controls all the country’s profits.” He also said that “the only role of the Cuban government is to demand sacrifice (from the people) and to repress them.”

Rubio said in an earlier message that the United States is prepared to offer a way out of the humanitarian crisis on the island and reiterated an offer of $100 million in aid that would be distributed by the Catholic Church and other charitable institutions not linked to the Cuban government.

Rodríguez responded by calling Rubio “a mouthpiece for corrupt and revanchist interests” of some Cubans in South Florida.

“He keeps talking about $100 million in aid that Cuba has not rejected, but whose cynicism is obvious to anyone given the devastating effect of the economic blockade and the energy siege,” Rodríguez said.

It was not possible to gauge Wednesday the response of everyday Cubans on the island to the announcement of Raul Castro’s indictment, because the Cuban regime prevented the free movement of dissidents and independent media.

“We have a police operation in the building’s ground floor to prevent us from leaving the house this May 20,” journalist Yoani Sánchez, who works for the independent news site 14ymedio, said on X before the formal charge against Castro was announced.

Díaz-Canel spoke of intervention and interference, and the foreign ministry released a quote from Raúl Castro warning that Cuba would become “a huge hornet’s nest” in the event of a U.S. military aggression.

The Cuban Embassy in the United States echoed Díaz-Canel’s words.

“The accusation against General Raúl Castro only reveals the arrogance and frustration of the representatives of the empire toward the Cuban revolution,” the embassy’s post on X said.

In all the reaction from the Cuban government there were no words of remorse for the killing of the four men aboard the unarmed Brothers to the Rescue planes, nor any acknowledgment of the Cubans in and outside the island who demand change.

The Cuban embassy in the United States has called for a nationwide celebration titled “Raúl’s 95th” to mark the Castro’s 95th birthday on June 3. The embassy’s statement emphasizes that Cuban youth are taking on the historic commitment to defend the revolution inspired by Fidel and Raul Castro’s legacy under the slogan: “Yes, we could, yes, we can, and yes, we will.”

Meantime, protests by citizens expressing their frustration over power outages that last more than 20 hours and the difficulty of obtaining food and medicine are growing.

Thogh official media, the Cuban government has created a state of siege among the public about a possible U.S. military aggression.

“We’re living as if at the start of a war, and it’s not imagination,” said one Cuban on the island who asked not to be identified. “Preparations for a war are being made, protests are increasing.”

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