Versión Español
Spanish.- The Cubans who are currently undocumented in Russia have become the new workforce for Vladimir Putin’s government public services, facing the historic cold wave that has kept Moscow’s temperatures close to 50 degrees below zero.
Armed with shovels, they roam the streets of the Arbat and Khamovniki districts, wearing the recognizable orange vests that identify them as state workers recruited by the leader. Their mission is to deploy 150,000 teams around the clock, thus coping with the extreme conditions.
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They revealed that they were not from Africa but from Cuba. On the other hand, their immigration status remains in limbo. During their stay in Moscow, they seek to earn some rubles to survive in the country. Most of them left Havana with a tourist visa to see if they could work for at least a year. The cold in Russia burns their hands, and their bones ache from the hours of work, but the reality is that necessity is also pressing them.
This group of immigrants, for these tasks, has a foreman who organizes and instructs their functions. Those who fulfill their duties receive 34,000 rubles (9,330 Cuban pesos, which in the informal market equate to 33 dollars), an amount that doubles the 4,000 pesos that a worker on the island receives, a figure that amounts to 14 dollars after the Cuban currency was quoted at 280 pesos per dollar.
Infiltrated and deceived
Putin’s government infiltrates Cubans as snowplowers in operations deployed by the Kremlin, despite the fact that this group of foreigners has the status of ‘illegal’ in the nation. Nevertheless, orders from the Executive focus on keeping them active to face the cold. Assignments include removing the 40 centimeters of snow accumulated in the south and southeast of Moscow, but the president hides this information.
According to the MSK1.RU media, while the State Budgetary Institution District of Zhilishchnik Arbat denies the hiring of Cuban street sweeping crews, claiming that they only have personnel from the Commonwealth of Independent States, the press service of the Central Administrative District confirmed that Cubans are indeed helping in all these functions.
Hiding it is impossible because there are already precedents of a network of trafficking Cubans to Russia with the complicity of the Castro-communist regime led by Miguel Díaz-Canel. On that occasion, the island’s dictatorship facilitated recruitment to fight in the invasion of Ukraine. The offer for this was obtaining Russian citizenship for the signatories and their families. This was added to a payment of around 2,300 euros. These findings were revealed at the same time as the dispatch of Cuban troops to Belarus for “military training.”
Putin’s desire for armed conflict against Ukraine has depleted Russia’s workforce, as indicated by a study from the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, reporting a shortage of 4.8 million workers, especially where high qualifications are not required: janitors and general workers.
In the worst season
The Cubans who are currently in Russia illegally are facing Moscow’s largest snowfall in almost 150 years. So far, thermometers have recorded temperatures close to 20 degrees below zero, while in Siberia, they reach 50 degrees below zero. It is a cold wave that extends from the northern hemisphere. Forecasts indicate the persistence of unbearable weather conditions for work.
Despite this scenario, Cubans accept these jobs, which include enduring wind gusts of up to 144 kilometers per hour. They have no other option due to their irregular immigration status that prevents them from improving their job opportunities.
In 2019 alone, nearly 28,000 Cubans entered Russia with tourist visas. Since then, they have endured from the pandemic to the war against Ukraine unleashed by Putin.
“Cubans within Russia are a business that makes a lot of money because we don’t have legal status, and companies don’t hire us; they put us to work for a salary much, much lower than what is paid,” confessed an anonymous Cuban to El Periódico last year.
Returning to the island is unlikely. An airplane ticket costs around 790 euros (more than 800 dollars), an unaffordable amount for any Cuban in Moscow, considering that their monthly salary does not exceed 250 dollars, and more than half covers food and rent. The hope they harbor is to turn Russia into a “springboard” to reach another European country, preferably Spain and Italy, Serbia, Finland, or Belarus.
