While Cubans go to the Russian war, do Havana become silly?

In a room very far from the front lines, in the center of Ukraine, a Cuban who wears Russian military uniform smiles widely while marking the rhythm of a table. But his humor soon becomes bleak.

Frank Dario Jarrosay Manfuga, 36, joined the Russian army in January 2024. In March he was captured by the Ukrainian forces and now hopes to find an exit to a desperate situation.

«I never intended to kill anyone. I never wanted to participate in a war. I have a family,» said Manfuga, who said he was deceived to address a plane to Russia with the promise of a construction work.

«Maybe some organization can save me,» he said, adding that he has no desire to return to Russia or Cuba.

Manfuga’s statement that he was cheated could not be verified.

Manfuga, a former geography professor who later became a professional musician to increase his income, is now a captured mercenary.

Your interview with Schemesthe RFE/RL Ukrainian Service Research Unit, was organized through contacts in the Ukrainian army, which is eager to demonstrate to what extent Russia has lay its network in search of foreign labor to reinforce the invasion and counteract An unpopular recruitment campaign in your country.

In the case of Manfuga, that distance is more than 9,500 kilometers from Moscow.

And it’s not alone.

«Based on passports obtained by Ukrainian computer pirate -Boronat, co -founder of the Cuban Democratic Board of Directors, a US -based NGO that advocates democratic change in the communist Cuba. «This network could not work without the approval of the Cuban regime.»

If that figure is exact, it would be less than half of the number of North Korea soldiers who, as reported, participate in the Russian war with the open support of their government, especially in the effort to counteract the offensive of the offensive of the offensive of the offensive Shock of Ukraine in the Russian region of Kursk.

But unlike North Koreans, Cuban combatants in Russia have left an important mark on social networks, and many of them have openly embraced the militarism and ideology of Kremlin, according to a Schemes investigation.

These publications helped Schemes identify hundreds of mercenaries, find training facilities not previously denounced with the help of satellite images and discover the location and nature of some of the military activities of Cubans in Russia and in the Ukrainian territory occupied by Russia.

They also ask questions about the effort that the Prorruso government of Cuba is making «to neutralize and dismant The war.

Dead in the battle for Bajmut

Important indications of the magnitude of the participation of the Cubans in the war came just a few days after the declaration of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Cuba, when a hacking of documents unearthed to almost 200 Cubans who served in the Russian army, initially destined to The Tula region, south of Moscow.

That treasure was first discovered by the research group centered in Ukraine InformnaPalm, and the documents that prove the service of the Cubans come from the email account of an older Russian pirated by Cyber ​​Resistance, a group of Ukrainian hackers.

Since then, RFE/RL journalists have found new evidence of hundreds of other apparent Cuban mercenaries in the Russian social network Vkontakte.

In many cases, their accounts were created in 2024, apparently the year they arrived in Russia for training prior to deployment.

Schemes’ investigation linked many of the Cuban mercenaries with a presence in line with the 106 airborne division.

In an example, a photo published in July 2023 by a man named Aliesky Anache included the geolocation Promyshlenny Proyezd, an area of ​​the city of Tula known for housing the 106.ª Airborne Division and its 51.º Paracharidist Regiment.

Subsequently, journalists were able to geolocate the military building of blue walls where that photo was taken.

The satellite images of the region suggest that there is no other military unit parked in the surroundings.

Units of the 106 Airborne Division participated in the battle of Bakhmut. Sadly known as «the meat chopper», the battle, which lasted months, concluded with the Russian occupation of the city in May 2023 and was one of the bloodiest chapters of the war to date.

And at least one Cuban, a 41 -year -old fighter with the Chiki call indicative, seems to have died there before being buried in Moscow, according to a Vkontakte publication found by RFE/RL journalists.

Another Cuban with the same indicative became a minor celebrity in Russia after appearing on the Zvezda military television channel.

In a segment of a Zvezda program of August 2, 2024, the fighter, whose real name is Rafael, was seen scribbling «until the sight, Baby» («Goodbye, Baby» in Spanish) in military projectiles and informed the interviewer That he had «in love with Sarraceno wheat», a Russian basic food, during his military service.

Rafael’s Vkontakte profile presents photos of him with patches associated with the Wagner group in Russia.

As of August, Rafael published several images of combat positions in the Ukrainian region of Kherson. But many of their publications on previous social networks presented photos with other Cubans during training exercises and bars in Tula.

The photos of the bar and the combatants that appear in them helped RFE/RL journalists geolocate a second military installation used by Cubans from 106.

This installation, which until now had not been publicized, in the Tula region is the paratrooper training field, unofficially called KRYM (Crimea) in the Vkontakte geoetiquetas.

For the rubles, it helps Russia

Extreme poverty in Cuba helps explain the attractiveness of Russian military service for Cubans. Historically friendly ties with Moscow, which date back to the Soviet era, mean that citizens of the island nation can enter the country as tourists without visa.

The typical monthly salary for a foreigner who is ready in the Russian army with a one -year contract is the equivalent of $ 2,000.

That was apparently enough for Odin Rivas, who appeared in one of Rafael’s publications from Tula, changed the management of a small business in Cuba for active military service.

Using the Marine Traffic ship tracking and satellite images of Planet Labs, RFE/RL journalists found satellite images that showed that Russian oil tankers had docked in Cuban ports in 2022, 2023 and 2024.

According to data obtained by Schemes from the KSE and Kpler Institute, in 2024, oil tankers transported more than 1.8 million barrels of Russian oil products to Cuba. Since the beginning of 2025, they took more than 700,000 barrels to the Caribbean island.

One of those deliveries occurred at a vital moment, since Cuba witnessed his worst protests in several years in March 2024 amid the shortage of energy and food.

Havana has never formally supported Russia’s invasion.

But on March 1, a day when Russia attacked civil infrastructure and killed hundreds of civilians in cities throughout Ukraine, its permanent representative before the United Nations, Pedro Luis Pedroso Cuesta, criticized the West for «assuming that Russia would remain helpless before direct threats to your national security. «

And in May 2024, Russian state media reported that Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel had wished for Russian President Vladimir Putin in «The Special Military Operation», as the Kremlin calls war, during the conversations in Moscow that agreed with the Russian military parade on May 9 in commemoration of the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.

In comments to Schemes, the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that Cuba «has clearly chosen Russia’s side in the large -scale war due to its anti -American position.»

In addition to an extensive investigation of open sources, Schemes journalists obtained copies of Russian military documents from Ukrainian military sources over other Cubans that serve in Russian military units.

One of the documents was a questionnaire belonging to Julio Peláez, a 38 -year -old man who last September requested in Russian through Vkontakte helps to get a plane ticket to Moscow to appear at «any recruitment center.»

In the questionnaire, Peláez, who said he had never been abroad before, seemed to resort to a propaganda cliché of Kremlin about Ukraine by expressing his motivation to join war.

«I consider that it is a duty of every free person who hates the Nazis,» Peláez wrote.

At the end of October, according to its profile page, Peláez was in Russia and had published a photo of his military team with the «Z» Pro-war symbol, a patch with the Cuban flag and a document similar to a Russian passport.

(An investigation by Valeria Yehoshyna, Olya Ivleva, Kyrylo Ovsyaniy, Kira Tolstyakova and the Schemes program)