The Minister for Defence Vladimir Padrino denounced today the harassment and military threat from the United States against the people of Venezuela, with the presence of F-35 warplanes in the vicinity of the national territory.
From the Generalísimo Francisco de Miranda air base and in the company of the commander of the FANB Operational Strategic Command, General in Chief Domingo Hernández, the senior military command assured that the Bolivarian Republic wants peace and tranquillity.
«I denounce the presence of US combat aircraft in the Caribbean Sea in zones close to Venezuela,» he stressed, and certified that «this does not intimidate the Venezuelan people.»
The General in Chief revealed that at this moment 36 thousand military personnel are deployed as part of the ongoing operations in several parts of the country to confront drug trafficking, criminal groups, and illegalities.
Padrino expressed that «I always tell the imperialists to measure their actions and decisions well because miscalculations could lead to the prospect of a third world war.»
While offering a balance of the operational deployments of the Bolivarian National Armed Force (FANB), he ratified the defence of the nation in popular, military, and police fusion, which «is in permanent offensive,» he noted.
He indicated that the initiative must always be carried forward, without losing sight of it because «if the initiative is lost, the offensive is lost and in turn the defensive.»
He underlined that in Venezuela there are no defensive postures, but «patriotic ones that move forward every day with coherent strategies in defence of the beloved homeland.»
Above all, he affirmed, in the current juncture when the US empire rises and deploys its warships and warplanes in the Caribbean Sea, in an area that in Latin America we qualify as a Zone of Peace and it is the «spirit that is breathed» in the region, he opined.
He declared that whoever does not understand it must refer to the Proclamation of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States that, in 2014 in Havana, Cuba, «everyone stood up and said: this is a Zone of Peace free of violence.»
The Sectoral Vice President for Political Sovereignty, Security, and Peace denounced that they want to impose blackmail and coercion through force, extortion, and military threat.
He commented that in the face of this they have been preparing the people, the State, the institutions, and the FANB, and for this reason the Commander in Chief called for the readiness of the Bolivarian National Militia, to which more than eight million militiamen have joined, of whom more than 60 percent have been trained for years.
