A consortium of totalitarian countries, led by Russia, is waging an imperialist and genocidal war against Ukraine, with repercussions that extend far beyond Ukraine’s borders and affect the free world at large. North Korea provides artillery and missiles, China supplies electronics, and Iran supplies the dreaded Shahed drones. However, there is another partner in this aggression, shielded from public scrutiny by its apologists in the West: the Castro dictatorship.
The truth is that the Cuban regime provides extensive support in intelligence, diplomacy and ‘cannon fodder’ for Russia’s “special military operation.” Thousands of young Cubans have been sent as mercenaries to fight alongside the Russian occupation forces in Ukraine. Many of them were deceived, recruited to fight in a conflict that has no relevance to their own daily reality on the island.
Frank Dario Jarrosay Manfuga, 35, is one of these young men. A math teacher and musician by profession, he was captured on the front line by the Ukrainian armed forces in March and is now a prisoner of war, thousands of miles away from his native Guantanamo. I had the opportunity to interview him in a Ukrainian prison to better understand the terrible situation facing thousands of young Cubans caught up in yet another foreign war, the result of the Castro regime’s historic subordination to the dictates of Moscow.
Jarrosay told me he would rather spend 50 years in a Ukrainian prison than return to Cuba, where he suffered from extreme poverty and a lack of individual freedoms. “I came here out of necessity,” he confessed. Overwhelmed by what he calls “the system” – the set of political and economic measures that the dictatorship uses to suffocate Cubans – Jarrosay was attracted by the idea of going to Russia to work. The offer had been widely circulated among the young people in Guantanamo.
His journey from Guantanamo, on the eastern tip of Cuba, to Moscow was hastened by invisible hands. No one in Cuba’s communist regime, which interferes in every aspect of individual life, did anything to prevent his recruitment or his journey. Five other young Cubans accompanied him on the trip.
Once in Moscow, he discovered that the contract was for war, not work. Well-fed and given special attention, he was initially excited: “These are the guys!” he thought. “But life changes once you sign the contract…” he told me.
Everything changed when he arrived at the Russian military training center on Ukrainian territory. There, he says, he witnessed the horrors of war immediately. On February 14, 2024, the Russian base where he was located was attacked by Ukrainian bombing. Four young Cubans and 14 Russians died before his eyes. He doesn’t know much about them and thinks it will be very hard for their families in Cuba when they find out. He says that many Cubans have already died and he thinks that the Russians have left the bodies in Ukrainian hands. He saw a constant stream of dead and mutilated Russian soldiers returning from the front.
He describes the dehumanization in the Russian army, how Cubans are forced to go to the front line under direct physical threat of death from Russian officers. Being colorblind, Jarrosay does not see well at night. He got lost on a night mission and “by the grace of God,” as he puts it, found himself walking through a minefield unharmed and stumbled upon a Ukrainian trench. To his surprise, the Ukrainians captured him, but did not beat him.
Ukrainian intelligence sources estimate that there are more than 5,000 Cubans fighting in Ukraine. They believe that 60% are young workers duped like Jarrosay and the remaining 40% are special forces personnel of the Cuban regime’s intelligence services.
The recent combat deaths of Cubans fighting as part of Russian special assault units, as well as Cubans directly linked to the regime’s repressive forces, and the 2023 defense treaty between Belarus and the Castro dictatorship, which commits Cuban special forces to Belarus for “training,” further corroborate the Ukrainian assessment.
Jarrosay refers to the 40% of Cuban regime sycophants fighting for Russia as “the stupid people” and says that they are the ones holding back change in Cuba. “There is still too much fear on the island for change,” he says, recalling how he himself did not join the massive anti-regime protests in July 2021. However, he did know how “the stupid people” – the regime’s special forces – suppressed popular protests in the village of Imias, near his hometown, in May 2023. He did not know about the massive anti-regime protests in his region after his capture.
During our conversation, Jarrosay recounted the ongoing lack of food and water in his province, saying his grandparents told him of a “time before communism” when fields were fertile and food was plentiful. He recounts how there were no “books with content” in public libraries, how he watched shows by exiled Cuban artists and influencers on the internet, how he searched for information everywhere to find the truth. He calls it “trying different flavors of soda to find out what’s what.” He laughs bitterly at how Cuba’s ruling families live off of outsized wealth at the expense of the Cuban people. He feels insulted by a regime censorship that would even dare to censor Celia Cruz, the legendary exiled queen of Cuban music.
He reflects on the past, on the Cubans forced by the Castro regime to fight in Angola in the 1970s, many of them maimed by the war, abandoned by the regime and living in absolute poverty. In private conversations, these veterans have told him “this is no good,” this system is useless.
The Castro regime has set up a clandestine operation using young people like Jarrosay to support Putin in his desperate need for manpower, while maintaining “plausible deniability.” Their political support for the “special military operation” is blatant. It is ridiculous that the European Union would finance a brutal dictatorship like this, which is shamelessly part of Putin’s axis.
Frank Dario Jarrosay Manfuga, driven by a mixture of desperation, opportunism and the desire to escape a repressive system, has committed the serious crime of mercenarism, which carries long prison sentences under Ukrainian law.
I do not justify his actions, but I do feel compassion for him. His story is one more fragment of the fragmented reality of Cuba: that of a population oppressed by a communist dictatorship that has lasted 65 years.