Cuba has confirmed that senior officials from Havana and Washington held face-to-face talks on the island in early April, in the highest-level diplomatic encounter between the two governments in nearly a decade, as the Trump administration's pressure campaign against the communist-run island shows no sign of abating.

Alejandro García del Toro, deputy director general for US affairs at Cuba's foreign ministry, confirmed the meeting on April 20, describing it as "a sensitive issue" handled with discretion given the fraught state of bilateral relations. The US delegation comprised assistant secretaries of state, while Cuba was represented at deputy foreign minister level, he said. US diplomats had not set foot on the island since 2016.

"The entire exchange was conducted with respect and professionalism," García del Toro told Cuba's Communist Party newspaper Granma, adding that neither side had issued threats or set deadlines, a direct rebuttal of reports in the US press suggesting Washington had presented Havana with an ultimatum.

The Cuban official left little ambiguity about his government's principal demand. "The elimination of the energy blockade against the country was a top priority for our delegation," he said. "This act of economic coercion is an unjustified punishment of the entire Cuban population. It is also a form of global blackmail against sovereign states, which have every right to export fuel to Cuba, under the rules that govern free trade."

The confirmation follows a report by Axios that American diplomats travelled to Havana on April 10 for multiple meetings with Cuban officials, including Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, grandson of former president Raúl Castro. Rodríguez Castro holds no official role in the Cuban regime or Communist Party, yet has emerged as a central figure in the backchannel diplomacy, and he is said to wield more clout than the nominal president, Miguel Diaz-Canel. On the eve of the talks being acknowledged publicly, Mariela Castro, daughter of Raúl Castro, told reporters that her father was participating in "the analysis for decision-making" in connection with the negotiations, an indication that the 93-year-old former leader retains influence over the process.

The two sides offered sharply divergent accounts of what was discussed. Washington presented a series of demands, among them the freeing of prominent political prisoners, a halt to political repression and far-reaching economic liberalisation, according to a State Department official cited by Axios. US officials also raised concerns about the growing footprint of foreign powers on the island, in an implicit reference to Moscow's continued support for Havana. According to Reuters, Washington is also pressing for permission for Elon Musk's Starlink satellite internet terminals to operate on the island, and for compensation for American citizens and corporations whose assets were confiscated following the 1959 revolution. García del Toro denied that any such conditions or deadlines had been presented.

Havana has taken some steps that analysts have read as confidence-building gestures. In late March, Cuba released 51 prisoners in what it described as a gesture of goodwill towards the Vatican, which has long played a behind-the-scenes role in brokering contacts between Havana and Washington. Cuba then pardoned more than 2,000 prisoners on April 4, framing the move as a "humanitarian and sovereign gesture" in observance of Holy Week. According to AFP, non-governmental human rights organisations questioned the scope of the releases, with Cubalex, a Miami-based human rights group, saying it could independently verify the release of just 24 political prisoners from the announced cohort of 51.

The talks are taking place against a backdrop of acute economic and humanitarian distress. The Trump administration's de facto oil blockade, in place since January when a US-led operation captured Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and severed Cuba's dominant source of subsidised oil, has driven the island to the brink of collapse. Cuba's national power grid, largely dependent on ageing oil-fired generators, failed three times in March alone. A Russian tanker delivered 730,000 barrels of crude oil to the port of Matanzas at the end of last month, providing a temporary reprieve that analysts said would cover little more than a week of the island's diesel needs.

International concern over Cuba's trajectory is mounting. The leaders of Mexico, Spain and Brazil issued a joint statement at the weekend voicing alarm over the "dramatic situation" on the island and calling for sincere and respectful dialogue. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz added his voice on April 20, saying there was no justification for military intervention. "The ability to defend oneself does not mean the right to intervene militarily in other states when their political systems do not match what others might have in mind," he said.

Trump has repeatedly warned that Cuba is "next" on his list of targets following the Iran campaign, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio dismissed recent Cuban economic reforms as falling well short of the "drastic" changes the White House requires.

"Whether I free it, take it − I think I can do anything I want with it,” Trump said last month.

“It may be a friendly takeover, it may not be a friendly takeover. It wouldn’t matter because they’re really, they’re down to, as I say, fumes.”

Díaz-Canel's public acknowledgment of the talks came months after Trump had repeatedly insisted negotiations were already in progress, a claim Havana had conspicuously declined to confirm. The Cuban president struck a defiant tone nonetheless, saying last week that the island was prepared to fight should Washington carry through on its threats of military intervention. "We do not want it, but it is our duty to prepare to avoid it and, if it becomes inevitable, to defeat it,” he said at a public rally. Those threats that may be closer to materialising than Havana would like: the Pentagon is stepping up contingency planning for potential military operations in Cuba once the situation in the Middle East stabilises, USA Today reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

What happens next will depend less on the diplomats in the room than on the pace of the island's economic deterioration. The clock, as much as Washington, is now Cuba's most formidable adversary.