The Foreign Ministry of Ukraine announced on Monday it had plans to open four new embassies in Latin America by the end of the year and over ten new consular offices in Europe – in part at the expense of Ukraine’s embassy in Cuba.
The Foreign Ministry did not state it would shut down the Ukrainian embassy in Havana completely, but stated that it would move forward with a “reduction” in Ukraine’s diplomatic activity in the hostile communist country. The announcement followed the revelation by Breitbart News last week that Cuba is freezing state-owned bank accounts of foreign nations and blocking diplomats from around the world from withdrawing money meant for living expenses, leaving some diplomats struggling to make ends meet. Ukraine was among the nation’s reportedly struggling to ensure that its diplomats could afford daily expenses such as food and household goods.
The four Latin American nations identified as soon to be home to Ukrainian embassies are Panama, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, and Uruguay. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky greatly increased outreach to Latin America in the aftermath of the full-scale Russian invasion of his country that began in 2022 with the most success in countries led by conservative presidents. All four enjoyed extended periods of conservative governances prior to Ukraine’s announcement and three still have presidents that either identify as conservative or align with anti-communist values. Uruguay, the exception, had a center-right president until March, when leftist President Yamandú Orsi took office.
According to the state news network Ukrinform, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha revealed the plans to expand Ukraine’s diplomatic presence during a meeting bringing together the nation’s diplomatic leaders.
“Sybiha confirmed the plan to open four new embassies by the end of 2025 in the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Panama, and Uruguay,” Ukrinform detailed. “At the same time, he noted a reduction of Ukraine’s diplomatic presence in Cuba, with the resources reallocated to strengthen Ukraine’s presence in the region.”
The move appears to be as a result of both the progress Kyiv has made in expanding ties to the countries targeted for new embassies and Cuba’s growing role as one of Russia’s most vocal and valuable allies – and the only other country known to be sending thousands of fighters to kill Ukrainians on the battlefield, alongside North Korea.
In Uruguay, Zelensky invested heavily in building a relationship with former President Luis Lacalle Pou, whose term concluded in March. Lacalle Pou’s administration was supportive of the Ukrainian cause and laid the groundwork for the arrival of a Ukrainian embassy to Montevideo. Zelensky continued his diplomacy with a warm greeting congratulating current President Orsi following his inauguration in March.
In Panama, Ukraine has enjoyed vocal support from conservative President José Raúl Mulino. Mulino and Zelensky met in person last year during the United Nations General Assembly in New York, expressing a desire to expand ties. Panama also participated in a conference in December on cooperation between the region and Ukraine.
Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa has not identified as a traditional conservative, championing among his most important causes the alleged climate crisis and embracing some government expansion. On foreign policy, however, Noboa has enthusiastically pursued a closer relationship with American President Donald Trump and conservative Argentine President Javier Milei. During Milei’s inauguration in 2023, Noboa was seated in between Zelensky and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who famously engaged in a heated, argument while looming awkwardly over the Ecuadorian president.
Noboa has offered Ecuador as a mediator country for peace talks between Russia and Ukraine. In April, Noboa announced that Ukraine had decided to open an embassy in Quito.
The Dominican Republic, under conservative President Luis Abinader, has also sought not just to expand diplomatic ties with Ukraine, but buy more of Ukraine’s critical agricultural goods. During remarks in June 2024, Abinader called for a swift end to the Russian invasion, noting that smaller countries such as his that rely on Ukrainian grains face food insecurity as a result of the distant war. Abinader participated in a summit that month in Switzerland to seek an end to the Russian invasion, which did not yield any meaningful changes on the battlefield.
The choice to reduce diplomatic activity in Cuba follows months of reports of the relationship between Kyiv and Havana deteriorating to the point of open war. In March 2024, a Telegram channel linked to the Ukrainian government published a video of a man it identified as Cuban national Frank Darío Jarrosay Manfugás. Jarrosay was reportedly captured fighting against the Ukrainian military in Kursk.
“It was not directly to the war. I didn’t come to the war. The page said that you come here to work in plumbing, masonry, carpentry,” Jarrosay, who claimed to come from Guantánamo, said in an interview with Ukrainian soldiers. “That is to say, the cities that Russia conquered, we came to rebuild them. That was the contract, but not to shoot bullets.”
The Cuban national stated that he had no military training whatsoever and did not expect to fight, so when the Russians dropped him into an active battlefield, he accidentally began following a Ukrainian soldier thinking him to be his comrade. He was captured after willingly, but mistakenly, walking into a Ukrainian trench, he said.
Ukrainian lawmaker Maryan Zablotskyy revealed in May that he had evidence that Russia had recruited as many as 20,000 Cuban men alongside Jarrosay to fight and kill Ukrainians. Russian social media networks have been flooded with Cubans sharing pro-Russian war propaganda, claiming to be fighting Ukrainian “Nazis.”
When confronted by this evidence, the Cuban Communist Party has denied that it is actively participating in the invasion, claiming instead that unspecified “human traffickers” were scamming young Cuban men into traveling to Russia for nonexistent construction jobs that turned out to be combat positions.
The Ukrainian embassy in Havana at press time is largely a symbolic structure, with minimal diplomatic activity and serving as a symbol for anti-communist resistance. Following the launch of the full-scale invasion in 2022, Cuban regime thugs arrested a Cuban national, Christian activist Pablo Enrique Delgado Hernández, for bringing flowers to the Ukrainian embassy in solidarity with the country against the Castro regime’s ally Russia.
Zablotskyy, the Ukrainian member of Parliament, told Breitbart News in a report published last week that Ukraine is among the countries whose diplomats are blocked from accessing their own money in Cuban banks.
“If you speak to any embassy in Cuba, they will say that Cuban government is freezing funds that they receive for their funding,” Zablotskyy explained. “Cuban government typically requires that foreign embassies use their government-run banks. These funds in recent years are increasingly frozen with no end in sight.”
“Problems with this I heard at least from Ukrainians, Japanese, Canadian, many EU countries, Georgia, Azerbaijan, etc,” he added, noting that the lack of cash has left embassy workers “without food or means of living for months.”
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