Venezuelan army recruits 5,600 new troops amid US military threats
Venezuela’s armed forces have added 5,600 new troops as Washington intensifies its military pressure on the Latin American country.
Saturday’s swearing-in ceremony at Fuerte Tiuna, the capital’s largest military base, came after President Nicolas Maduro urged heightened enlistment.
Washington has alleged, without offering evidence, that Maduro heads the drug Cartel de los Soles (Cartel of the Sun), which it labeled a terrorist organization last month.
Maduro says the US administration of President Donald Trump seeks to depose him and seize the nation’s oil resources.
Addressing the event, Colonel Gabriel Alejandro Rendon Vilchez, one of the officials who conducted the ceremony, declared, “Under no circumstances will we allow an invasion by an imperialist force.”
Official data indicate that Venezuela’s armed forces comprise 200,000 troops and another 200,000 police personnel.
Also on Saturday, Maduro spoke by phone with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan about global geopolitics and the US military buildup in the Caribbean.
The Turkish leader "expressed deep concern over the threats recently facing Venezuela, particularly the military deployment and various actions intended to disrupt peace and security in the Caribbean," Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil said in a statement.
Maduro described the maneuvers in the Caribbean as an "illegal, disproportionate, unnecessary and even extravagant" act of aggression, adding that Venezuela remains committed to peace.
“It is important to keep channels of dialogue open between the US and Venezuela,” Erdogan told him, according to a statement from his office released on X, adding that he hoped “the tension will ease as soon as possible.”
Since August, the US Southern Command has dispatched warships, submarines, aircraft carriers, F-35 squadrons, and 15,000 personnel to the Caribbean and off Venezuela’s coast under the guise of combating drug trafficking.
The US Southern Command has further deployed Carrier Strike Group Twelve (CSG-12), including the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, to the region.
US forces stationed there have conducted lethal strikes on more than 20 purported narco-trafficking vessels, killing at least 87.
Officials in Caracas have condemned the attacks as a deliberate display of US hostility designed to intimidate the region and undermine Venezuela’s sovereignty amid heightened geopolitical tensions.
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