Much of the island including the capital, Havana, was plunged into darkness, with streets only illuminated by headlamps and battery-powered lights on Monday.

UNE, Cuba’s grid operator, said early on Tuesday morning that it was gradually restoring electricity to provinces and cities around the country.

It is the latest in a series of widespread blackouts to hit the Caribbean island, where aging electricity infrastructure and chronic fuel shortages have been exacerbated by a US blockade on oil shipments to the communist-run nation.

Coupled with shortages of food and medicine, the situation has triggered rare public dissent in the form of street protests, which continued with people banging pots and pans in central Havana on Monday.

Unauthorised demonstrations are illegal in Cuba and those who defy the ban risk being jailed.

“It is not just the blackout,” 26-year-old Havana resident Lázaro Hernández told news agency Reuters.

“There is no water because there is no electricity to run the pumps. There is no electricity, no food, no oil, no fuel, and private businesses have high prices because everything is going up now, since they have to move their goods by truck and transport. All of this is really very bad.”

Meanwhile, Dayana Machin, also 26 and from Havana, was unsurprised by the blackout. “We’re already used to living with this,” she said.

Cuba, an island of around 10 million people, relies heavily on fuel imports.

Its regional ally Venezuela was believed to have sent around 35,000 barrels of oil a day – about half Cuba’s oil needs – until its supplies were cut off following the seizure of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro by the US in early January.

US President Donald Trump has also threatened tariffs on any country supplying oil to Cuba.

It has been three months since the nation has received an oil shipment, Cuba’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, said on Friday.

With the government in Venezuela now appearing to co-operate with the US, the Trump administration has turned its attention to the Latin American nation the US has shared the most animosity with since its revolution in 1959.

Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday that he believed he would have the “honour of taking Cuba”.

“Whether I free it, take it, I could do anything I want with it, you want to know the truth,” he said. “They’re a very weakened nation right now.”

He previously threatened a “friendly takeover” of Cuba and has urged it to “make a deal” or face unspecified consequences.

Díaz-Canel confirmed last week that his government was in the initial stages of talks with the Trump administration to resolve their differences.

At the same time, the Cuban government released 51 prisoners in what it described as a demonstration of “goodwill”.

To mitigate the impact of the severe fuel shortage – that has also affected air travel and, with it, tourism to the island – Cuba has increased production of domestic crude and gas, as well as solar generation.

But its actions have yet to quell protests among Cubans, for whom power cuts have been a persistent source of public discontent.

A protest in the central city of Morón on Saturday devolved into a small group ransacking a local Communist Party office.

Jose Daniel Ferrer spent more than three years in prison following anti-government protests that swept through the Communist-run island in 2021.

Under the agreement brokered by the Catholic Church, outgoing US President Joe Biden removed Cuba from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism just days before the end of his term.

In return, Cuba said it would free 553 people, many of whom were detained during the anti-government protests.

The island began releasing the first of hundreds of prisoners on Wednesday, freeing about 20 people, according to local NGOs.

Ferrer is one of the most recognised names among Cuban dissidents and pro-democracy activists. The 54-year-old leader of Cuba’s Patriotic Union (Unpacu), an opposition group in the country, was jailed and charged with public disorder following the 2021 protests.

“I am at home, in fair health, but with the courage to continue fighting for the freedom of Cuba,” Ferrer told Reuters in a phone conversation.

Many of the prisoners released this week were arrested in association with 2021 protests, during which citizens demanded that the Cuban government do more to ease widespread food shortages and lower spiralling prices.

Biden’s move to remove Cuba from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism came just days ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.

Senator Marco Rubio, Trump’s pick for secretary of state, has been critical of the decision to ease sanctions on Cuba, hinting that it could be reversed.

Speaking at his Senate nomination hearing on Wednesday, Rubio said referring to some of the sanctions on Cuba that the Biden administration rescinded on Tuesday that “the new administration is not bound by that decision”.

Earlier, Trump’s choice for national security adviser, Mike Waltz, said on Fox News that “anything [the Biden administration] are doing right now, we can do back, and no-one should be under any illusion in terms of a change in Cuba policy”.

The Cuban government says the island’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism is deeply unjust and aimed at harming its economy by making it impossible for Cuba to access international banking credits.

Under the agreement brokered by the Catholic Church, President Joe Biden removed Cuba from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism just days before his term ends.

In return, the Cuban government said it would free 553 people, many of whom were detained during anti-government protests that swept through the Communist-run island in 2021.

While Havana has cautiously welcomed the deal, there are doubts as to how long it will last after President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of state, Marco Rubio, appeared to hint that it could be reversed.

Speaking at his Senate nomination hearing on Wednesday, Rubio said referring to some of the sanctions on Cuba that the Biden administration rescinded on Tuesday that “the new administration is not bound by that decision”.

Earlier, Trump’s choice for national security adviser, Mike Waltz, had said on Fox News that “anything they [the Biden administration] are doing right now, we can do back, and no one should be under any illusion in terms of a change in Cuba policy”.

Despite the doubts raised by Trump administration officials, Cuba released about 20 prisoners on Wednesday, according to local NGOs.

One of those released was 53-year-old Donaida Pérez Paseiro, who had been sentenced to eight years in prison for taking part in the 2021 anti-government protests, during which citizens demanded that the Cuban government do more to ease widespread food shortages and lower spiralling prices.

In a video she posted on social media, Ms Pérez Paseiro said that the Cuban government had used her and her fellow prisoners as “a bargaining chip” to leverage Cuba’s removal from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism.

In the recording, she also said she would continue to “fight for Cuba’s freedom”.

Dariel Cruz García was also among those who were freed on Wednesday.

The 23-year-old had been sentenced to 15 years in prison for sedition after joining in the 2021 protests.

He told Reuters that officials had announced that he could serve the remainder of his sentence – which has been reduced since he was originally sentenced – at home.

“I escaped from hell to be with my family. I’ll behave myself so I can move on,” he told the news agency.

The vice-president of Cuba’s highest court, Maricela Sosa, said on TV that those freed had neither received an amnesty nor had they been pardoned and warned that they could be re-arrested if they broke the terms of their parole.

There are also still hundreds of families awaiting news as to whether their loved ones will be among the 553 the government has agreed to release.

“They’re desperate, all waiting with tremendous anxiety for a call from their children,” Dariel Cruz García’s mother told Reuters.

The Associated Press news agency broke the story on Tuesday, citing US officials. But the move is likely to be a symbolic measure rather than a lasting policy.

With President-elect Donald Trump slated to take office on January 20, the decision may quickly be reversed under the incoming administration. Still, the Biden administration pushed forward, notifying Congress of its intent.

“An assessment has been completed, and we do not have information that supports Cuba’s designation as being a state sponsor of terrorism,” a White House official told the AFP news agency.

Cuban officials, meanwhile, heralded the announcement as long overdue. On social media, Cuban Minister of Foreign Affairs Bruno Rodriguez called Biden’s actions “positive” but “limited” in their efficacy.

“Cuba should have never been included in arbitrary list of State sponsors of terrorism,” he wrote. “That was an arbitrary and politically motivated designation with very severe impact on the Cuban population, damaging economy, causing scarcities and encouraging migration to US.”

This is not the first time the designation against Cuba has been rescinded and reimposed, though. And Republicans quickly announced their intention to fight the change.

“Today’s decision is unacceptable on its merits,” Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a Cuban American lawmaker, said in a statement to the media.

“The terrorism advanced by the Cuban regime has not ceased. I will work with President Trump and my colleagues to immediately reverse and limit the damage from the decision.”

 was first designated a “state sponsor of terrorism” in 1982, under the presidency of conservative leader Ronald Reagan.

The US Department of State explains on its website that Cuba was sanctioned for “its long history of providing advice, safe haven, communications, training, and financial support to guerrilla groups and individual terrorists”.

The designation was made during the final decade of the Cold War. Diplomatic relations between the two countries had long been severed by that point, in large part due to Cuba’s close ties with the former Soviet Union, the US’s Cold War adversary.

Cuba had also weathered a decades-long US trade embargo by that point.

Being labelled a “state sponsor of terrorism”, however, further isolated the Caribbean country, limiting its ability to participate in financial transactions with US-based institutions and barring it from receiving US assistance.

In  the lead-up to Tuesday’s announcement, there are only three countries besides Cuba identified as “state sponsors of terrorism” in the US. They include North Korea, Iran and Syria.

Biden’s decision, however, echoes that of his close Democratic ally, former President Barack Obama.

Biden served as vice president during Obama’s two terms in office, including in 2015, when his administration pursued a “thaw” in the US relationship with Cuba.

In April of that year, Obama announced he would remove Cuba from the list of “state sponsors of terrorism”, following meetings with then-Cuban President Raul Castro.

At the time, Obama reassured Congress that Cuba had “provided assurances that it will not support acts of international terrorism in the future”.

A few months later, in July 2015, Obama took a step further and declared that the US would re-establish formal diplomatic relations with Cuba for the first time since the 1960s.

“Instead of supporting democracy and opportunity for the Cuban people, our efforts to isolate Cuba despite good intentions increasingly had the opposite effect: cementing the status quo and isolating the United States from our neighbours in this hemisphere,” Obama said at the time. “We don’t have to be imprisoned by the past.”

He noted that Cuba lies less than 150 kilometres (90 miles) from the Florida coastline.

But  when Trump succeeded Obama as president in 2017, he took a more hardline approach to foreign policy, including sanctions on Cuban products.

On January 12, 2021, in the waning days of his first term, Trump restored Cuba to the list of “state sponsors of terrorism”.

“With this action, we will once again hold Cuba’s government accountable and send a clear message: the Castro regime must end its support for international terrorism and subversion of US justice,” Trump’s secretary of state at the time, Mike Pompeo, said in a statement.

He accused Cuba of having “fed, housed, and provided medical care for murderers, bombmakers and hijackers” for decades.

The Cuban government, meanwhile, blasted the change as “hypocrisy” and “political opportunism”.

After  Trump was re-elected to a second term in November, there had been speculation that Biden himself could pull a similar move, using the final days of his presidency to reverse Trump’s decision.

On November 15, for instance, a group of Democratic representatives, led by outgoing lawmaker Barbara Lee, sent the Biden White House a letter urging “immediate action” to address the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Cuba.

The letter cited the toll of Hurricane Rafael on the island, as well as the country’s crumbling energy infrastructure, which has led to frequent blackouts. Since 2021, Cuba has also seen a record number of citizens leave its borders, in response to the economic instability.

“The  situation is not only causing immense suffering for the Cuban people but also poses serious risks to U.S. national security interests,” the letter said. “If left unaddressed, the crisis will almost certainly fuel increased migration, strain U.S. border management systems, and fully destabilize the already-strained Caribbean region.”

By removing Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism”, the letter-writers indicated that more oil resources could reach the island, thereby “facilitating access to energy and economic relief for the Cuban people”.

But Republican Senator Rick Scott of Florida denounced such a proposition as an “unacceptable risk”.

His state has a large population of Cuban refugees who fled repression and economic instability in Cuba during the latter half of the 20th century — and who form a powerful Republican-leaning voting bloc.

“Calls at the 11th hour of the Biden administration from communist-sympathizers in the Democrat Party for President Biden to remove Cuba from the State Sponsor of Terrorism list are not just ignorant, but dangerous,” Scott said in a statement to the Florida Phoenix publication.

Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, Senator Marco Rubio, is the descendant of Cuban immigrants and has likewise blasted efforts to roll back restrictions on the island’s government.

He has previously called Obama’s efforts to normalise relations “one-sided concessions“.

The National Electric Union (UNE) said on Thursday that it had boosted generation to 1,450 megawatts (MW), still less than half the typical peak demand of 3,200MW.

“The [grid] is operating normally now, but because of a generation deficit we don’t have sufficient capacity to cover demand,” said Lazaro Guerra, who oversees the sector for Cuba’s Ministry of Energy.

This week’s nationwide blackout — the third in less than two months — occurred in the early hours of Wednesday after the Antonio Guiteras power plant in Matanzas, the country’s top electricity producer, shut down.

That triggered a chain reaction, overwhelming an already strained power system and leaving the capital, Havana, in the dark.

Cuba’s oil-fired power plants are decades old and struggling to operate, but this year brought additional struggles, as oil imports from Venezuela, Russia and Mexico dwindled.

About half of the Caribbean nation’s power generation facilities are offline for maintenance or broken down, and a majority of Cuba’s residents suffer hours-long, rolling blackouts on a daily basis even when the grid is functional.

On Thursday, classes and work activities gradually returned to normal after the nationwide blackout.

Power had returned to all of Havana’s “circuits”, the local electric company said, and all of its hospitals were back online.

But the Cuban authorities said they will continue their current practice of implementing daily, five-hour power outages by block or zone as they have been doing for the past few months amid the energy crisis.

The Cuban power grid collapsed multiple times in October as fuel supplies dwindled and Hurricane Oscar struck the far-eastern end of the island, prompting authorities to close schools and nonessential workplaces.

In November, Hurricane Raphael knocked out the grid again as it made landfall on the island as a Category 3 storm.

Authorities said the Antonio Guiteras power plant in Matanzas, the country’s top electricity producer, shut down about 2am (07:00 GMT) on Wednesday, prompting the grid collapse.

The Ministry of Energy and Mines said in a post on social media that it was working to restore power.

Cuba’s oil-fired power plants, obsolete and struggling to operate, reached a full crisis this year as oil imports from Venezuela, Russia and Mexico dwindled.

The system failure on Wednesday morning left the capital, Havana, almost completely in the dark, the Reuters news agency reported, quoting a witness.

Lights before sunrise could be seen only in a handful of large hotels and government buildings across the city’s skyline.

Reports of blackouts elsewhere in Cuba on social media suggested the entire island of 10 million people was without power although the government had yet to confirm the extent of the outage.

Cuba’s power grid collapsed multiple times in October as fuel supplies dwindled and Hurricane Oscar struck the far-eastern end of the island, prompting authorities to close schools and nonessential workplaces.In November, Hurricane Raphael knocked out the grid again as it made landfall on the island as a Category 3 storm.

The storm tore across Cuba with winds hitting 185km/h (115mph), damaging homes, uprooting trees and toppling telephone poles.

The Cuban authorities have blamed previous outages on difficulties in acquiring fuel for power plants, which they have attributed to the tightening, during Donald Trump’s first presidency, of a six-decade-long United States trade embargo.

But the country has also experienced a broader economic crisis marked by soaring inflation and shortages of medicine, food and water.