A consortium of totalitarian countries supports Russian strongman Vladimir Putin’s genocidal 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 the Castro dictatorship of Cuba 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 to the everyday plight of Cubans in the island.
Frank Dario Jarrosay Manfuga, 35, is one of those young Cubans. A math 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 Guantánamo.
I recently managed to have access to him for an interview in a prison somewhere in Ukraine. I gained access in both my capacity as the coordinator of the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance and working with the Diario Las Americas. I sought to speak with him to better understand the terrible situation faced by thousands of young Cubans 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 prefers to spend 50 years in a Ukrainian prison 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 Guantánamo.
His travel from Guantánamo 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 in the trip.
Once in Moscow he discovered that the contract was for war, not work. Fed and feasted, he was excited for the job at first.
“These are the guys!” he thought. “But life changes once you sign the contract.”
Everything changed once he arrived at the Russian military training center within Ukrainian territory. There, he says, he witnessed the horrors of war immediately.
On February 14, 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 told me. 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 described the dehumanization, in the Russian army, of Cubans being forced to the front lines under direct physical threat of death by Russian officers.
Being colorblind, 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 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 percent are hoodwinked young workers like Jarrosay and about 40 per cent special forces personnel from the Cuban Regime’s intelligence services. That estimate is corroborated by recent reported deaths in battle of Cubans fighting as part of the Russian special storm units and deaths of Cubans directly linked to the regime’s repressive forces. The Cuban communist regime also signed a defense treaty with Belarus in 2023 that commits Cuban special forces to Minsk for “training,” a potential pipeline to the Ukraine war theater.
Jarrosay refers to the 40 percent of Cuban regime sycophants fighting for Russia as “the stupid people” and says that it is people like them who are slowing down change in Cuba.
“There is still too much fear in the island for change,” he said, 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, extinguished the popular protests in the town of Imias, near his 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 related 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 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 laughed bitterly about how the Cuban ruling families live outrageously wealthy lives at the expense of the Cuban people. He expressed offense that regime censorship attempts to erase every Cuban who failed to bow down to communist demands – even Celia Cruz, the exiled legendary queen of Cuban music.
He reflected on the past, on the Cubans who the Castro regime forced to fight in Angola in the 1970s. Many of them, maimed by war, are now 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’s desperate need for manpower and at the same time maintain “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.
Dr. Orlando Gutiérrez-Boronat is a writer, educator, journalist, and co-founder and spokesman for the Cuban Democratic Directorate (Directorio). Directorio was part of the Patriotic Committee organizing October 2020’s Anti-Communist Caravan in Miami.
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