Hundreds of thousands of barrels of Russian oil are heading to Cuba, according to maritime tracking data, as the communist island suffers blackouts under a US economic blockade and Donald Trump threatens to take it over.

The sanctioned Russian tanker Anatoly Kolodkin loaded 730,000 barrels of crude in the Russian port of Primorsk on 8 March, and on Wednesday at 1600 GMT was in the eastern Atlantic, bound for Cuba, maritime analytics firm Kpler said.

Its data showed the Russian-flagged vessel, owned by the Russian state shipping company Sovcomflot, was scheduled to unload at the Matanzas oil terminal on the north of the island about 23 March.