Russia war sanctions mean a struggle for Cuban car owners

Lots of Cubans are starting to have a car problem

ARTEMISA, Cuba -- Francisco Pérez Rodríguez has a car problem — one that's starting to be all too common for many Cubans.

He's been rebuilding the engine of his father-in-law's Moskvich — one of tens of thousands of cars and other vehicles that poured into Cuba from its Cold War allies in the Soviet bloc and later Russia over the past half century.

To run, it needs a new timing belt. But Pérez Rodríguez said that's something only available these days in Russia. And flights there have been disrupted by Western sanctions imposed after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Global restrictions on transport and trade with Russia pose an especially serious problem for Cubans, whose socialist government has lived since the early 1960s under an embargo imposed by the nearby United States. Much of the island's fleets of trucks, buses, cars and tractors came from distant Russia and are now aging, in need of parts.