Cuba's president has a message for the US after Donald Trump said the island was 'next' for a takeover

Cuba's president has said he won't step down as he pushed back against mounting US pressure for change on the island.

President Trump's rhetoric over displacing the communist regime has intensified recently, but Miguel Diaz-Canel told Sky News' US partner network NBC News that "stepping down is not part of our vocabulary".

"In Cuba, the people who are in leadership positions are not elected by the US government, and they don't have a mandate from the US government," he told interviewer Kristen Welker.

"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."

Mr Diaz-Canel took over from Raul Castro as head of the one-party system in 2018.

"If the Cuban people understand that I am not fit for office, that I have no reason to be here, then I should not be holding this position of president, I will respond to them," he said.

Cuba's 10 million or so people have been dealing with major blackouts in recent weeks due to a three-month-long US blockade on the oil imports which are needed to keep the country's power stations running.

Domestic homes, hospitals and transportation have all been affected, with the situation prompting some rare displays of public dissent.

The Caribbean island has been under a US economic embargo for more than 50 years, but it lost a vital energy lifeline in January when the US captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

A Russian tanker, Anatoly Kolodkin, with more than 700,000 barrels was allowed to dock in March, in what Washington described as a humanitarian move, but the island appears firmly in Mr Trump's sights.

He told reporters that the oil wouldn't make a difference to the long-term prospects of the island's "corrupt leadership", adding that the island is going to be "next".

In other comments in early March, he said that Cuba wanted a deal, and that Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose parents are from the island, was leading negotiations.

"It may be a friendly takeover, it may not be a friendly takeover," added Mr Trump.

In his interview with NBC News, Mr Diaz-Canel said the US had "no moral [basis] to demand anything from Cuba", and that its leaders should realise "how much they have deprived the American people from a normal relationship with the Cuban people".

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Sergei Ryabkov, Russia's deputy foreign minister, has been in the Cuban capital Havana this week, and on Friday he said that his country would not abandon or "betray" Cuba.

Quoted by Russian news agencies, he reportedly 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."

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