Sanctions and blockades have always been sold as an attack against the government and not the people. That’s of course a complete lie - sanctions are meant to make the people suffer enough that they rise up against their government (or so the aggressor hopes).
But this is much more blatant. The ghouls in the Trump admin are openly stating they want to harm the people. They want to create a humanitarian crisis, create suffering, and kill people, all so the Cuban government sees this suffering and decides that capitulating is better than seeing their people die. Truly evil stuff.