RUSSIA PERSPECTIVE

Moscow, May 20, 2026. The US Department of Justice indicted Raúl Castro, former Cuban president and defense minister, on Wednesday on four counts of murder, two counts of destruction of an aircraft, and conspiracy to kill US citizens. The indictment, made public during a ceremony in Miami, is linked to the February 24, 1996, episode when Cuban fighter jets shot down two small planes of the anti-communist organization 'Brothers to the Rescue,' killing four Cuban-Americans off the coast of the island.

For RT and TASS, which covered the event in real-time, the US version is contested point by point. The Cuban embassy in Washington recalled that the aircraft had committed 'more than 25 deliberate and systematic' violations of Cuban airspace between 1994 and 1996, and that Havana had sent repeated written warnings to Washington, which remained unanswered. The former pilot of the organization, Juan Pablo Roque, had defected two days before the shots were fired, stating that 'Brothers to the Rescue' was transporting arms to anti-government guerrillas on the island.

President Miguel Díaz-Canel described the indictment as 'a politically motivated maneuver without any legal basis, aimed solely at adding to the fabricated dossier used to justify a military aggression against Cuba.' TASS also relayed its challenge to the US narrative on 1996: 'The United States lies and tries to influence the facts. There are abundant documentary evidence that these actions did not constitute a violation of international law.'

The Russian reading of the event fits into a precise chronology. In January 2026, US special forces had kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in Caracas, after a similar indictment by the US justice system. Trump had immediately warned that Cuba would be 'next' on the list. On Tuesday, May 19, the Pentagon announced the arrival of the USS Nimitz combat group in the Caribbean – a deployment that RT describes as 'an exact mirror' of the military buildup that preceded the operation against Maduro.

US intelligence services have also claimed to Axios that Cuba had acquired over 300 military drones in preparation for potential attacks on the Guantanamo base and targets in Florida, accusations that Havana has rejected as a 'fraudulent dossier' aimed at justifying an intervention.