HAVANA, Cuba – On Thursday, Russia donated nearly 20,000 tonnes of wheat to political ally Cuba, a welcome gift for the Caribbean island nation, which is suffering from soaring global grain prices as a result of the Ukraine conflict.
Russian Ambassador to Cuba Andrei Guskov stated at a ceremony that his country’s government agreed to send the grains to Cuba last year.
According to Guskov, the ship transporting the wheat was stranded off the island for a month due to Western sanctions imposed on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine. He claimed that banking restrictions had complicated Russia’s payments to the shipper, making it impossible for the ship to unload and “convert the wheat to bread for Cubans.”