Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro closed the border with Brazil in order to stymie efforts to deliver humanitarian aid from allies of U.S.-backed leader Juan Guaido.
“Better to prevent than to be sorry,” Maduro said Thursday. “So I am taking every measure of prevention to protect our people.”
President Trump and other countries that recognize Guaido as president have been trying to coordinate aid deliveries with the lead opposition lawmaker for weeks. Maduro, grappling with a food shortage and economic crisis that has developed into a mortal threat to his regime, has blocked the aid while appealing to Russia and China for alternative streams of assistance.
“I’m very thankful to the Pan American Health Organization and Russian President Vladimir Putin for their resolve in delivering medicines,” Maduro said in remarks quoted by Russian state-run media.
President Trump has ordered U.S. agencies to position humanitarian aid at border crossings in Colombia, while urging the Venezuelan military to stop following Maduro’s orders to block the aid deliveries.
“Millions of Venezuelans are starving and suffering while a small handful at the top of the Maduro regime plunder the nation into poverty and into death,” Trump said Monday in Miami.
Vice President Mike Pence is traveling to Bogota on Monday for meetings with Colombian President Ivan Duque and the Lima Group, a bloc of Western Hemisphere nations that have combined to pressure Maduro in recent years.
“The United States is proud to join the Lima Group and other global partners to marshal our resources, provide much needed humanitarian relief, and stand together with the people of Venezuela until democracy and freedom are fully restored,” Alyssa Farah, the press secretary for the vice president, said earlier Thursday.
Special envoy Elliott Abrams, the State Department lead for the Venezuela crisis, is traveling in Florida and Colombia on Thursday and Friday “to support the delivery of humanitarian aid to some of the most vulnerable people in Venezuela,” the State Department added in a parallel announcement.
“What the U.S. empire is doing with its puppets is an internal provocation,” Maduro also said, per an Associated Press translation. “They wanted to generate a great national commotion, but they didn’t achieve it.”
