Russia has accused the United States of being a threat to regional security, following the Trump administration’s August 18 order to deploy naval forces near Venezuelan waters and the recent attack on a boat belonging to a drug trafficking ring controlled by Nicolás Maduro’s government, Newsweek reported.
Why It Matters
Russia’s criticism of the US president’s actions comes as Trump tries to work with President Vladimir Putin to end the war that has raged for more than three and a half years.
What To Know
Speaking at the White House on Tuesday, September 2, Trump said that 11 members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang, which the US has designated a terrorist group since February, were killed in a United States Navy strike on their boat, which he said was in international waters and was smuggling illegal drugs into the United States.
According to a Newsweek report, the military strike is part of the Trump administration’s larger effort to combat the flow of illegal drugs into the United States, which it is seeking to crack down on by launching military operations against the cartels behind the trade.
The United States has had a complicated relationship with oil-rich Venezuela for years. The United States has severed diplomatic relations with Venezuela since January 2019, imposing a series of sanctions and accusing it of widespread criminal activity.
Asked for her reaction to the rising tensions between the two countries in the Americas, Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said the United States was exerting “blatant pressure” on Venezuela.
“This is a special page in world history,” Zakharova told a press briefing at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Russia, on Thursday, according to Newsweek. “What the West has been doing toward states that want to pursue their own independent policies is absolutely inadmissible.”
“Look at the sanctions pressure. Look at the endless manipulations regarding human rights,” she continued. “The situation is being exaggerated and a threat to regional security is being created.”
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“Look at the sanctions pressure. Look at the endless manipulations regarding human rights,” spokeswoman Zakharova said. “The situation is being exaggerated, and a threat to regional security is being created.”
What Pete Hegseth is saying
“President Trump is willing to go on offense in ways that others have not been… We’ve got incredible assets, and they are gathering in the region,” Pete Hegseth, the 29th US Secretary of Defense, said in comments on Fox & Friends on Wednesday.