A consortium of totalitarian countries supports Putin in his imperialist war against Ukraine specifically and against the Free World in general. North Korea provides the artillery and missiles; China, the electronic inputs; Iran, the fearsome Shahed drones.
There is another partner in the aggression, protected from the limelight by its apologists in the West: The truth is that the Castro dictatorship provides extensive intelligence and diplomatic support and cannon fodder for the “special military operation.”
Thousands of young Cubans have been sent as mercenaries to fight alongside the Russian occupation forces in Ukraine. Many of them have been duped into fighting in this terrible conflict that has no relevance for the everyday plight of Cubans at home.
Frank Dario Jarrosay Manfuga, 35, is one of those young Cubans. A maths teacher and musician by profession, he was captured on the front lines by the Ukrainian Armed Forces in March. He is now a prisoner of war held thousands of miles away from his native Guantanamo.
I recently managed to gain access to him for an interview in a prison in Ukraine. I sought to speak with him in order to better understand the terrible situation faced by thousands of young Cubans who have been caught in the middle of another foreign war as a result of the historic subordination of the Castro regime to Moscow’s dictates.
Jarrosay told me that he would prefer to spend fifty years in a Ukrainian prison rather than return to Cuba, where he suffered from stifling poverty and lack of individual freedoms.
“I came here out of need,” he said.
Overwhelmed by what he calls “the system,” the set of political and economic measures that the dictatorship uses to suffocate Cubans, Jarrosay got enthused by the idea of going to Russia to work. The offer had been widely disseminated among the young people of Guantanamo. His way from Guantanamo all the way in eastern Cuba to Moscow was expedited by unseen hands. No-one from the Communist Regime in Cuba, which meddles in every single aspect of individual life, did anything to prevent his recruitment and journey. Five other young Cubans accompanied him on the trip.
Once in Moscow, he discovered that the contract was for war, not work. Fed and feasted, he was enthused at first.
“These are the guys!” he thought. “But life changes once you sign the contract,” he tells me. Everything changed once he arrived at the Russian military training centre within Ukrainian territory. There, he says, he witnessed the horrors of war immediately.
On 14 February, 2024, the Russian base he was in was hit by a Ukrainian bombardment.
Four young Cubans and 14 Russians died in front of his eyes. He doesn’t know much about them and thinks that it will be very hard for the families back in Cuba when they find out. He says many Cubans have already died, and thinks that the Russians have left the bodies behind in Ukrainian hands. He saw a steady stream of dead and maimed Russian soldiers returning from the front lines.
He describes the dehumanisation, in the Russian army, of Cubans being forced to the front lines under direct physical threat of death by Russian officers.
Being colourblind, Jarrosay does not see well at night. He got lost in a late-night mission and “by the grace of God” as he says, he got lost, walked across a minefield without injury and stumbled into a Ukrainian trench. Much to his surprise, the surprised Ukrainians captured him but didn’t beat him.
Ukrainian intelligence sources estimate that there are more than 5,000 Cubans fighting in Ukraine. They believe that 60 per cent are hoodwinked young workers like Jarrosay and about 40 per cent special forces personnel from the Cuban Regime’s intelligence services.
Recent reported deaths in battle of Cubans fighting as part of the Russian special storm units, as well as of Cubans directly linked to the Regime’s repressive forces, the 2023 defense treaty between Belarus and the Castro dictatorship that commits Cuban special forces to Belarus for “training”, all further corroborates the Ukrainian estimate.
Jarrosay refers to that 40 per cent of Cuban Regime sycophants fighting for Russia as “the stupid people,” and says that it is people like them who are slowing down the time of change in Cuba.
“There is still too much fear in the island for change,” he says, recounting how he himself did not join the massive anti-Regime demonstrations in July 2021. But he did know how “the stupid people,” Regime special forces, put down the popular protests in the town of Imias, nearby to his own home city, in May 2023. He did not know about the massive anti-Regime protests in his region after his capture.
During our conversation, Jarrosay lamented the permanent lack of food and water in his province, saying that his grandparents told him of a “time before Communism” when the fields were fertile and food was bountiful. He recounts how “books with substance” could not be found in the public libraries, how he watched shows by exiled Cuban artists and influencers on the Internet, how he sought information anywhere he could in order to find the truth. He calls it: “trying different flavored sodas to know what is what”.
He laughs bitterly about how the Cuban ruling families live outrageously wealthy lives at the expense of the Cuban people. He says he feels insulted by a Regime censorship that would even target Celia Cruz, the exiled legendary Queen of Cuban music.
He reflects on the past, on the Cubans that the Castro regime forced to fight in Angola in the 70s and, now, many of them maimed by war, are abandoned by the Regime and live in abject poverty. In private conversation, these veterans have told him that “esto no sirve”— “this system is no good.”
The Castro Regime has mounted a clandestine operation where it uses young men like Jarrosay to support Putin in his desperate need of manpower and, at the same time, maintains “plausible deniability.” Its political support of the “special military operation” is unabashed.
It is ridiculous that the European Union finances a brutal dictatorship like this one, so shamelessly part of the Putin axis.
Frank Dario Jarrosay Manfuga, out of a mix of desperation, opportunism, and desire to flee a repressive system, has committed the serious crime of mercenarism, which carries long years in prison under Ukrainian law.
I do not excuse his actions, but I do feel compassion for him. His story is one more shard of Cuba’s fragmented reality: that of a population crushed by a communist dictatorship that has lasted 65 years.
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