...The Cuban government said 32 officers from its Revolutionary Armed Forces and the Interior Ministry, which runs intelligence services, were killed in the line of duty as part of Maduro’s security detail.
“It’s a defeat for Cuba and denotes its weakening, highlighting vulnerabilities in its security procedures,” said María Werlau, author of “Cuba’s Intervention in Venezuela,” a book published in 2019.
Relied upon by the Soviet KGB for its extensive informant networks in Latin America and Africa, Cuban expertise to protect allies, detect unrest and suppress dissent became a lucrative export. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba’s security and intelligence services secured a lifeline from oil-rich Venezuela as Havana inched closer to economic collapse....
But Cuba’s security detail failed to defend Maduro, despite a U.S. armada threatening the Venezuelan leader for months from the Caribbean.
“What’s almost worse is that they couldn’t inflict any damage on the Americans,” said Jorge Castañeda, Mexico’s former foreign minister and author of several books about Cuba’s regime. “This means the Cubans weren’t where they needed to be, with the strength they needed to have.”
Such intelligence flaws are also likely to hurt Cuba’s Communist regime at home, particularly if it loses Venezuela’s economic support and subsidized oil shipments amid an unprecedented economic implosion.
“The people can go hungry, but the repressive apparatus must have privileges,” said Enrique Garcia, a former Cuban intelligence officer who defected to the U.S. “If the regime loses all economic capacity, no system can withstand it.”
President Trump told reporters Sunday on board Air Force One that Cuba was ready to fall. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the Communist island is in trouble and that one of the biggest problems Venezuelans have is that they must declare independence from Cuba....
Former intelligence agents and dissidents who monitor Cuba’s security apparatus estimate that some 140 officers were assigned to provide personal security services to Maduro. Dozens of them are thought to have been injured or suffered severe burns in the rain of missiles and shrapnel during the U.S. operation, these people said.
Cuba and Venezuela have disclosed few details about the U.S. military incursion. Vladimir Padrino, the four-star general who has led Venezuela’s military since 2014, said Sunday the U.S. killed a large part of Maduro’s security team.
The weekend raid was precise and represented the first direct, unilateral U.S. military intervention in South America. It required months of work by U.S. intelligence and included at least one informant within the Venezuelan government who helped the U.S. “understand how he moved, where he lived, where he traveled, what he ate, what he wore, what were his pets,” said Caine....
Cuba’s intelligence and security team in Venezuela was led by senior military-intelligence veterans, including Asdrúbal de la Vega, the Cuban officer closest to Maduro who became his shadow and slept in a room next to the deposed strongman, said Carlos Cabrera Pérez, a Cuban journalist based in Spain who writes about Cuba’s security apparatus. De la Vega’s whereabouts haven’t been disclosed.