Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said Thursday that he would not resign under US pressure and called for open dialogue in his first television interview with an American broadcaster.

“We have a free sovereign state, a free state. We have self-determination and independence, and we are not subjected to the designs of the United States,” Diaz-Canel told NBC News, according to their translation of his remarks.

“The US government that has implemented that hostile policy against Cuba has no moral to demand anything from Cuba,” the 65-year-old leader added.

“The concept of revolutionaries giving up and stepping down -- it’s not part of our vocabulary.”

Washington has waged a pressure campaign on communist-ruled Cuba, imposing a virtual oil blockade on the island by threatening tariffs on any country that attempts to sell oil to the island.

Russia will never abandon or betray Cuba and plans to help the Communist island tackle energy issues linked to a US embargo, a Russian deputy foreign minister was quoted as saying early yesterday after talks in Havana.

Sergei Ryabkov, quoted by Russian news agencies at a news conference in the Cuban capital, also said Moscow had no intention of walking away from its interests in the Western hemisphere no matter what the United States might say.

Ryabkov said Moscow’s help for Cuba would go beyond the large shipload of oil it had sent to the island last month.

“I am certain that the events of recent weeks in our relations will have us moving forward to find solutions to the toughest problems...emerging from the illegal and absolutely unacceptable blockade of the island by the US,” Ryabkov was quoted as saying.

“We cannot betray Cuba. That is out of the question. We cannot leave it on its own.”

Cuba’s energy needs were a priority, Ryabkov said. “It is too early to say what the next steps will be. But it is clear we will not be limiting our supplies to the load that was aboard the tanker Anatoly Kolodkin,” Ryabkov said.

“Russia has no plans to walk away from the Western hemisphere, no matter what Washington might say,” the agencies quoted him as saying. “They are obsessed with pushing Russia and China out of the region.”

He said the US and Israeli attacks on Iran “make it clear that using force, sanctions and political diktat do not produce desired results”.

The Russia-flagged Anatoly Kolodkin, under US sanctions, arrived in Cuba last month carrying some 700,000 barrels of Russian oil - the first large delivery of crude oil since Washington moved to cut off the island’s fuel supply.