“To all airlines, pilots, drug dealers and human smugglers: consider the airspace above and around Venezuela as completely closed,” said one message, which was partly written in capital letters.
Venezuela denies existence of ‘Cartel of the Suns’: tensions with US continue to rise
Tensions between the United States and Venezuela have increased recently. The US has, among other things, sent an aircraft carrier to the region and carried out attacks on boats believed to be transporting drugs.
Trump has described the naval attacks as very successful. He made it clear last week that attacks could follow on land targets in the short term. “You have probably noticed that people no longer want to deliver by sea. And we are also going to stop them by land.”
Nicolas Maduro
The Trump administration says it wants to tackle drug trafficking and claims that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is the head of a terrorist drug gang. The US also does not consider Maduro the rightful leader of the oil-rich country in South America, where he has been in power since 2013.
The American newspaper The New York Times wrote that Trump and Maduro recently spoke by telephone. According to the newspaper’s sources, they have discussed the possibility of meeting in person.
‘Colonialist threat’
Venezuela condemns Donald Trump’s warning that the airspace above the country should be considered closed. In a response, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs calls the American president’s comment a “colonialist threat.”
Venezuela condemns “the colonialist threat that seeks to affect the sovereignty of its airspace and that constitutes yet another excessive, illegal and unjustified aggression against the Venezuelan people,” the statement said.