The United States Justice Department is expected to announce criminal charges against Raúl Castro, the former Cuban president, as early as Wednesday, in a move that marks the latest escalation of the Trump administration’s campaign to destabilise the communist government in Havana. According to sources familiar with the plans, a federal grand jury in Miami will indict the 94-year-old revolutionary leader for ordering the shooting down of two civilian aircraft operated by the exile group Brothers to the Rescue in February 1996. Four people, including three American citizens, were killed in the incident, which Havana has always justified as a legitimate defence of its airspace, though the International Civil Aviation Organization later concluded the planes were over international waters at the time. [A1][A12]

The indictment is not an isolated legal manoeuvre but part of a broader, co-ordinated pressure campaign that has intensified since January. Washington has imposed a total oil blockade, cutting off fuel supplies that Cuba depends upon heavily from its ally Venezuela, and has dramatically increased intelligence surveillance flights around the island. Viewed from Moscow, the timing and scope of these measures suggest the White House is prepared to follow the “Venezuelan scenario” — using a federal indictment as a predicate for a more muscular intervention, including the possible capture of Raúl Castro by special forces, as was attempted with the Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro earlier this year. [A2][A4][A7] The CIA director, John Ratcliffe, travelled to Havana in recent days and, according to reports, demanded the closure of Russian and Chinese intelligence-gathering stations on the island — a request that analysts in London regard as a direct challenge to the strategic foothold that both powers maintain in the Caribbean. [A4]

From Havana’s perspective, the timing is particularly ominous. The Castro government had hoped that the Trump administration’s prolonged military entanglement in Iran might divert its attention and resources away from the Caribbean. Those hopes have now faded, as the administration appears determined to press its advantage on multiple fronts simultaneously. [A10] The indictment is being prepared for announcement on Cuban Independence Day at the Freedom Tower in Miami, a ceremony that will also honour the victims of the 1996 shootdown — a choice of venue and date that observers in Latin America interpret as a deliberately provocative gesture designed to inflame diaspora sentiment and isolate the regime further. [A5]

Looking ahead, the question is whether legal action will remain a rhetorical weapon or become the prelude to kinetic operations. Sources cited by the New York Times acknowledge that a full-scale intervention against Cuba remains unlikely in the short term, given that most American special forces are currently committed elsewhere. [A4][A7] Yet the cumulative effect of the oil embargo, the intelligence flights, the CIA’s demands, and now a criminal indictment creates a ratchet of coercion from which the administration shows no sign of retreating. For Cuba, which has endured decades of economic warfare, the immediate prospect is not invasion but strangulation — and a leadership in Washington that seems determined to test how much pressure the island can absorb before its political structure begins to fracture.