Fact checking Cuba’s deputy foreign minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío on his appearance in 60 Minutes

Fact checking Cuba’s deputy foreign minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío on his appearance in 60 Minutes

 

“Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it.” – Jonathan Swift The Art of Political Lying (1710).

 

False claim: “Cuba does not threaten the U.S. or any country.” – Carlos Fernández de Cossío, Cuba’s deputy foreign minister responding to Matt Gutman of CBS News in his November 1, 2026 appearance on 60 Minutes.

FACT: Havana threatens United States national security, props up dictatorships in Venezuela and Nicaragua, and backs Moscow imperial ambitions in Ukraine.

Havana is supporting authoritarian regimes around the world, such as those in Russia, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Below is an October 23, 2026 presentation by the Center for a Free Cuba’s executive director on this topic.

This November 2025 presentation touched on Havana’s threats to the United States’ national security.

 

 

Assisting Moscow’s imperial war against Ukraine.

 

Havana fully backed Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, but ties had already been strengthened for over two decades. It is worth reviewing some highlights of the Cuban dictatorship’s support for Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine over the past two years. In addition to the visible presence of Cuban soldiers fighting in Ukraine to back Moscow’s illegal war, and thestatements made by young Cubans shipped abroad.

According to Ukrainian intelligence data — obtained from the analysis of foreign passports of mercenaries who signed contracts with the Russian army, to which they had access — this is the largest Cuban intervention abroad since the Angolan war in the mid-1970s. Between 6,000 and 7,000 Cubans are currently on the battlefield, according to the same sources, the second -largest contingent after the more than 10,000 soldiers sent by North Korea. Ukraine estimates that between 200 and 300 Cubans have died in the war.”

Denials by the Cuban dictatorship ring hollow because Cuban leaders have said the quiet part out loud. “We wish you and the Russian Federation success in carrying out the special military operation,” Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel told Russian President Vladimir Putin during their meeting on May 9, 2024, in Moscow, according to Sputnik Africa.

Miguel Diaz-Canel & Vladimir Putin meet in 2019. Source: Presidential Press and Information Office