The Communist Party of Cuba is selling thousands of young men to Russia as mercenaries to fight in the invasion of Ukraine, Orlando Gutiérrez-Boronat, the coordinator of the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance, told reporters on Monday.
Gutiérrez-Boronat, who is also a Breitbart News contributor, held a press conference on Monday in Miami, Florida, after returning from Kyiv, where he met with Cubans captured on the front lines being held by the Ukrainian government.
The men whom the Ukrainian government made available to him for interviews were identified as Ernesto Michel Pérez Arbeláez, Frank Darío Jarrosay Manfuga, and Yusbel González Tuercos. Jarrosay made news in March 2024 as the first Cuban known to be captured fighting for Russia in the Ukrainian war theater; a musician by trade with no military training, he was captured when he accidentally ran into a Ukrainian trench, as the Russians had not properly trained him to identify the warring parties.
During the press conference on Monday, Gutiérrez-Boronat took the opportunity to announce that the men were being treated humanely and were “safe and sound,” as they have not been able to contact their families since their departure from the island. The three, the activist alleged, are part of a group of thousands men recruited by a fraudulent apparatus that sells them to Russia for profit.
“We have proven the full participation of the Castro regime in the Russian war effort. Here the forces of the axis of evil has agglomerated to destroy Ukraine,” Gutiérrez-Boronat said. “The goal is to destroy the independent state of the Ukrainian nation and there is no safe place in Ukraine, although Ukrainians continue living life fully.”
“There is a recruitment operation directed by Castro intelligence alongside Russian intelligence,” he continued. “We are convinced that the communist Cuban regime is receiving a bonus per mercenary — and I can say that under my authority based on what I have seen, conversations I have had, and looking through what the Ukrainian intelligence has gathered.”
“The Castro regime — and I say it categorically — receives money for each mercenary,” Gutiérrez-Boronat reiterated.
Gutiérrez-Boronat added that his organization would soon publish a report based on his findings in Ukraine, expected to be shared with international human rights groups such as the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. One of the groups expected to use the findings is Justice Cuba, a commission whose goal is to ensure human rights and legal justice for Cubans. The Castro regime faces prosecution for its decades of violations of human rights laws in international courts. Justice Cuba head René Bolio also spoke at the press conference, stating that the new allegations constitute violations of international laws against human trafficking, mercenaries, and forced labor.
“Thousands of youths have been transferred under fraud, under coercion, under false promises and have been sent to fight a war,” Bolio observed. “They have been sent to the battle front in active military units. These acts alone constitute violations of all sorts of legislation — local, state, and universal.”
Regarding Cuba’s relationships around the world, Gutiérrez-Boronat emphasized that the Castro regime relies not just on Russia, but allies within the West, especially condemned the socialist government of Spain for its support of Havana.
“We are not just against that inept regime in Havana. We are struggling against a conglomerate of international power that wants to keep that regime in power — in Europe, in the United States, around the world,” he noted. “This struggle is ours, it depends on us. We at least have an American government backed very early by the brigade [the Bay of Pigs Veterans’ Association], and the resistance backed the brigade, that said clearly it is with the Cuban people.”
Gutiérrez-Boronat especially praised “freedom fighter” Mike Waltz, the American ambassador to the United Nations, for declaring the Castro regime an illegitimate government before the United Nations. President Donald Trump’s delegation to the United Nations, led by Waltz, achieved an unprecedented success last week when seven countries, including Ukraine, voted against a now-traditional vote against America’s “embargo” on Cuba, brought to the General Assembly annually by the Castro regime.
The findings presented by the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance are consistent with what Ukrainian officials told Congress during a special hearing on Cuba’s participation in the invasion in September.
“We have identified at least 20,000 Cubans recruited by Russia,” Andriy Yusov, a spokesman for Ukrainian military intelligence, told the briefing. “Cuba is ranked at the top of the list of sources of foreign mercenaries. Currently our good intelligence tells us about 20,000 people from Cuba who have already filled out the documents and have been recruited to fight for Russia.”
Yusov said that using Cubans was “beneficial” to Russia as “if a foreigner dies, there are no social payouts and no responsibilities.”
Following Ukraine’s vote against Cuba at the United Nations last week, its foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, listed Cuba’s offering of “thousands” of mercenaries to kill Ukrainians as a top reason for the unprecedented move.
“Thousands of them [Cubans] have signed contracts, joining the ranks of soldiers directly engaged in combat operations on Ukrainian soil,” he explained. “The unwillingness of Havana to stop massive deployment of its nationals in the Russian war against Ukraine constitutes complicity in aggression and must be condemned in the strongest terms. Ukraine will always oppose such a practice and defend the purposes and principles of the U.N. Charter.”
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