SAN LUIS POTOSÍ, Mexico.- A 35-year-old Cuban, a math teacher and musician, who is now a prisoner of war in Ukraine, offered exclusive statements to The Americas Newspaper about his experience on the battle front, on the Russian side, and the process by which he came to enlist to fight.
Interviewed by Orlando Gutiérrez-Boronat, national secretary of the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance (ARC), Frank Dario Jarrosay Manfugaa native of Guantánamo, said he was not seeking war, but was fleeing from “poverty, lack of freedom and the suffocating control of the Castro regime, which penetrates every aspect of Cuban life.”
His testimony, published this Tuesday, July 23, in The Americas Newspaper, He says he came to Russia for “an opportunity for progress,” a job in construction that was nothing more than a contract for to join the Russian ranks in the invasion of Ukrainefrom where he had to watch Cubans die.
“I came here out of necessity,” the young man told Gutiérrez-Boronat from a Ukrainian prison. He, like other Cubans who have declared themselves victims of similar situations, came because of an alleged job offer in which he was offered 250,000 rubles a month (more than 2,700 dollars a month) and Russian nationality, but ended up involved in the war.
“Cubans have a hard time, and being put in a place like this, with all kinds of food and promises, you say: this is solid. But when you sign the contract you see life differently,” said Jarrosay Manfuga, captured in March by Ukrainian forces.
The impact of war
He also confessed that the situation when he arrived in Russia had a great impact on him: “When I came here, I was surprised by the war. They told me, ‘Put on your uniform, go here and move forward.’”
In it battlefieldaccording to the aforementioned media, saw four Cubans die in a bombing carried out by the Ukrainians. “That was on Sunday, February 14, I have to look at the calendar, maybe my mind is failing me. But I also saw 15 Russians die. They were all young. This happened in a Ukrainian bombing against a Russian base in Donetsk.”
The tragic experience, however, is not a sufficient reason to want to return to Cuba because there “you cannot live, even if you have talents.”
Escaping the Island has also been the reason why many would have opted for fight on the side of one of the great allies of the Cuban dictatorship.
“I don’t know how many Cubans are involved in this, one is not a commander to know that. The Cubans I met had not been in the Cuban Armed Forces,” he told Gutiérrez-Boronat.
Turned into a mercenary
Now, from teacher and musician, turned mercenary, he recalled the experience of other Cubans in Angola, where they also went as mercenaries, under orders from Fidel Castro: “Many Cubans who went to Angola are without arms and neglected there. And in my opinion, today the wars are still in force.”
The presence of Cubans in Russia’s war against Ukraine was confirmed when in August 2023 two 19-year-olds, Andorf Velázquez García and Alex Vegas Díaz, denounced in a video who had been deceived into a trip to Moscow.
In the recording, the young men explained that they had signed a contract (in Russian) to go to work there, but in reality they were going to join the army of that country. They also said they were without documents (which were taken away from them) and assured that there were many more people in their situation.
TOUkrainian activists Members of the “Cyber Resistance” team provided the international volunteer organization InformNapalm with “unique evidence of the recruitment, training and transfer to Russia of entire units of Cuban mercenaries.”
For his part, a senior Ukrainian official denounced in March that Hundreds of Cuban soldiers were sent to their country as a direct result of the Cuban government’s “close collaboration” in “the shameful Russian invasion.”
The Ukrainian leader referred to the signing of military and repressive agreements during the visits to Cuba between 2023 and 2024 by the Russian Secretary of the Security Council, General Nikolai Patrushev.
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