Announcement comes days after Russian tanker brought some 700,000 barrels of crude to Cuba in response to energy crisis.

Russia plans to send a second ship carrying oil to Cuba, the Russian energy minister has said, as the Caribbean nation struggles under a crippling United States blockade.

Energy Minister Sergei Tsivilev said on Thursday that the cargo was being loaded and would be brought to Cuba.

“Cuba is in a total blockade; it’s been cut off. Whose shipment of oil made it? A Russian vessel broke through the blockade,” Tsivilev said, referring to a first Russian tanker that reached the island earlier this week.

“A second one is being loaded right now. We will not leave Cubans alone in trouble.”

His comments come just days after a Russian-flagged tanker carrying about 700,000 barrels of crude docked in Cuba’s Matanzas oil terminal on Tuesday, marking the first significant oil delivery to the country in about three months.

US President Donald Trump’s administration has imposed a fuel blockade of Cuba but granted a waiver to allow this week’s delivery for humanitarian reasons. It said such decisions would be handled on a case-by-case basis.

Cuba has endured weeks of blackouts, fuel rationing and food shortages since the Trump administration earlier this year threatened to impose tariffs on any country that sold or provided oil to the country.

The blockade, which came into effect following the US abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January, has been decried by Cuban officials as “cruel”.

In the capital Havana on Thursday, hundreds of people gathered on bicycles, motorcycles and small, three-wheeled vehicles to protest the US embargo.

“Yes to Cuba! No to the blockade!” the crowd shouted along Havana’s famed seawall, past the US Embassy and towards the downtown area.

“They are strangling us,” Ivan Beltran, 62, told the AFP news agency as he rode an electric tricycle with a photo of the late Cuban revolution leader Fidel Castro on the windshield.

During an official visit to St Petersburg on Wednesday, Cuban Deputy Prime Minister Oscar Perez-Oliva told Russian network RT that Havana and Moscow “have begun efforts to achieve stability in fuel supplies”.

He also said the two sides made progress in talks aimed at increasing the participation of Russian companies in oil exploration and production in Cuba.

Trump, who has repeatedly threatened to attack Cuba and remove its government, said on Sunday that he had “no problem” with Russia sending oil to the island.

“Cuba’s finished. They have a bad regime. They have very bad and corrupt leadership, and whether or not they get a boat of oil, it’s not going to matter,” Trump said.