CUBA is not afraid of war with the United States, President Miguel Diaz-Canel warned Washington on Thursday after new threats from US President Donald Trump.

“We don’t want war, but we’re not afraid of it, and we’re getting ready so we’re not surprised or defeated,” Mr Diaz-Canel said in an interview with Sky News.

He spoke a day after Mr Trump repeated threats to the socialist island, saying it was “coming our way after many, many decades” in a Wednesday rant against Spain’s centre-left government, mostly directed at Madrid’s refusal to raise military spending but including boasts about the US displacing the Spanish empire as the dominant power in the Americas.

Since kidnapping Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro at the start of the year, the Trump administration has turned the longstanding illegal US blockade of Cuba into an all-out siege, cutting off energy supplies with devastating impacts on its economy and healthcare system. Just one oil tanker, from Russia, has successfully reached Cuba since early January.

Mr Diaz-Canel said the “threats, the constant rhetoric of aggression against our country by the US government… are part of a strategy of media-driven intoxication and psychological warfare in order to frighten our country and destabilise our society.”

But Cuba was ready to fight “to the last drop of blood,” he warned.

On Tuesday Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said no progress had been made in talks with the US over its threats to the country. The same day, the largest US nurses’ union, National Nurses United, protested outside the US Congress, demanding it “end the war against the Cuban people.”