Steph Le Bref

HOW UKRAINE REPAID CUBA FOR TREATING ITS SICK CHILDREN FOR FREE For the 34th straight year, the overwhelming majority of UN member states voted in favor of a resolution calling for an immediate end to the decades-long US economic blockade against Cuba in the General Assembly. “[Cuban] children are dying because doctors lack access to essential medical supplies and medicines. This is unacceptable,” stated UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk, highlighting the civilian impact of US-imposed sanctions. Yet, despite international consensus on the illegal blockade’s human toll, Ukraine stood alongside the US and voted against lifting the restrictions for the second year in a row. This diplomatic stance comes despite a history of Cuban solidarity with the Ukrainian people. Following the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident, where an explosion caused a sharp increase in cancer cases among Ukrainian children, Cuba launched a multi-decade humanitarian initiative that provided comprehensive, free, specialised medical care to over 25,000 sick Ukrainian children at the Tarará Medical Complex near Havana, a programme Cuba sustained even through its own severe economic crises. This is why critics argue that Ukraine's vote to uphold a blockade that systematically starves Cuba's health sector, and consequently its children, reflects how geopolitical alignment with Washington has superseded historical memory. "Ukraine paid nothing. Voting to starve Cuba was their payment I guess," observed documentary filmmaker Domhnall Ó Luchrain, noting the irony behind Kyiv’s vote.