IMAGE: AFP 2019 / FEDERICO PARRA
On March 29, US Special Representative for Venezuela Elliott Abrams said that State Secretary Mike Pompeo would soon come up with a practical response to a recent deployment of Russian military specialists in Venezuela.
“We have a very nice options paper of the various things that can be done in US-Russia relations. There is a lot of things that are on the list. So, The Russians will pay a price for this,” Abrams said.
President Trump’s National Security Advisor John Bolton warned countries “external to the Western Hemisphere” against deploying military forces in Venezuela or “elsewhere in the Hemisphere” in a statement made on the same day.
He added that the US would consider such military deployments to be provocations and “a direct threat to international peace and security in the region”.
“We strongly caution actors external to the Western Hemisphere against deploying military assets to Venezuela, or elsewhere in the Hemisphere, with the intent of establishing or expanding military operations”, he said also accusing Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro of trying to remain in power by using “Russian military personnel and equipment”.
According to official comments by Russian and Venezuelan sides, Russian specialists, who recently arrived in Venezuela, had come there to discuss defence industry cooperation between the two states and not to conduct any sort of military operations. However, it’s apparent that the deployment of Russian specialists were aimed at strengthening positions of the Venuezuelan government amid continued US-backed regime change attempts.
According to reports in mainstream media outlets, the deployed Russian contingent included Special Forces operators and cybersecurity personnel.
