By Vera Bergengruen and José de Córdoba

Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe flew to Havana on Thursday for a rare meeting with Cuba's interior minister and the head of the country's intelligence service, as the country grapples with extreme fuel shortages and growing street protests.

Cuba's government said the meeting took place at the request of the U.S. Ratcliffe said Cuba needed to make fundamental changes to work with the U.S. on economic and security issues, a CIA official said. Ratcliffe told Cuban officials they have a limited window to stabilize the island's economy and engage with the Trump administration, the official added.

Ratcliffe warned his Cuban counterparts that President Trump should be taken seriously, the official said. To make the point, he referred to the U.S. military raid that deposed strongman Nicolás Maduro in January.

Photos released by the CIA show American officials meeting with Cuban officials -- who wore black suits instead of the usual white guayaberas -- over a long, white table decorated with bouquets of red roses and baby's breath.

In January, Trump declared Cuba "an unusual and extraordinary threat" to U.S. national security, invoking emergency powers to escalate pressure on Havana. Since then, Trump has often warned that Cuba "will be next" in his campaign against hostile regimes in the hemisphere.

Havana said it provided information to the U.S. delegation that "categorically showed that Cuba isn't a threat to the national security of the U.S. There are no reasons to include Cuba on the U.S. list of countries that sponsor terrorism."

Cuban officials told the U.S. team that there are no foreign military bases on the island. Cuba "doesn't support, doesn't finance or permit terrorist or extremist organizations," the government said.

The visit comes a day after Cuba's government said the country had run out of fuel oil and diesel needed to keep the lights on. The extensive blackouts have sparked protests in Havana, with anger rising over dayslong blackouts and deteriorating living conditions.

In a posting Wednesday on X, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said that the rapid deterioration of the island's electricity grid had a single cause: "the genocidal energy blockade imposed on our country by the U.S."

The Cuban officials at Thursday's meeting included Cuba's interior minister, Lázaro Alvarez. and Raúl Rodríguez Castro, known as "the Crab," the influential grandson of nonagenarian Cuban revolutionary leader Raúl Castro.

Rodríguez Castro, who was nicknamed "the Crab" because he was born with six fingers on one hand, has participated in several meetings with senior U.S. officials in recent months. He is a longtime bodyguard and chief aide to his grandfather.

The Cuban regime, which has for almost 70 years prided itself on its defiance of the U.S., has said it won't negotiate changes to its single-party political system. "To surrender isn't an option for Cuba," Díaz-Canel said in January.

The U.S. has pushed for the release of political prisoners, and the liberalization of Cuba's heavily centralized economy to head off the island's economic collapse.

"You cannot change the economic trajectory of Cuba as long as the people who are in charge of it now are in charge," Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday in a Fox News interview. "That's what's going to have to change because these people have proven incapable. I hope I'm wrong. We'll give them a chance. But I don't think it's going to happen."

Write to Vera Bergengruen at vera.bergengruen@wsj.com and José de Córdoba at jose.decordoba@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 14, 2026 19:27 ET (23:27 GMT)

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