Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blamed “the Communists in Havana” for the power outage that has worsened the humanitarian crisis unfolding under Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro.

“Cuba is the true imperialist power in Venezuela,” Pompeo told reporters Monday evening, noting the Cuban training of the regime’s security services. “So when there’s no electricity, thank the marvels of modern Cuban-led engineering. When there is no water, thank the excellent hydrologists from Cuba. When there’s no food, thank the Cuban communist overlords.”

Maduro is pinning the power outage on “multiple cyber-attacks,” which U.S. officials denied and cited years of mismanagement by the regime. The blackout is exacerbating food shortages in the country and leading to the deaths of babies and other vulnerable patients in hospitals without electricity. Pompeo, reversing the argument that the United States is meddling in Venezuela’s internal affairs, faulted Cuba and Russia for helping Maduro cling to power as most Western democracies recognize top lawmaker Juan Guaido as the interim president.

“The Kremlin is standing with its Venezuelan cronies against the will of the people of a sovereign nation to protect a Moscow-friendly regime,” Pompeo said. “The nations that support Maduro are, by the nature of this illegitimate regime, carrying out the very foreign interventionism of which they accuse others.”

Pompeo delivered that message hours after the Treasury Department sanctioned a Moscow-based bank that was formed in 2011 through a partnership of state-owned Russian and Venezuelan companies. Trump’s team has warned that a suite of international sanctions against such institutions could be in the offing, though Pompeo declined to say what countries are allowing Maduro’s regime to stash wealth abroad.

“We do not want assets that are around the world taken and transferred to Russia, where they’ll be hidden,” Pompeo said, to explain his reticence. “We have a handful of countries that are providing aid and comfort to the Maduro regime at enormous expense to the people of Venezuela.