The Venezuelan military says it has raised its alert level following the discovery of an alleged U.S. plot to fabricate an incident at an ExxonMobil offshore platform in the contested waters between Venezuela and Guyana to justify an armed conflict.
The Venezuelan Defense Ministry issued a statement on Sunday claiming the plot was designed to create a pretext for conflict in the long-contested Essequibo region—a mineral-rich area roughly the size of Florida that Venezuela claims as its own but has been under Guyanese control since an 1899 arbitration ruling.
The statement came a day after Vice President Delcy Rodríguez accused the United States, the Guyanese government, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, and Erik Prince—founder of the private military firm Blackwater—of conspiring to launch a military operation against Venezuela. Rodríguez claimed the “false flag” plot would begin with an attack on the ExxonMobil platform in the contested waters.
“This plot aims to stage an attack on an ExxonMobil platform operating in waters extending into the yet-to-be-delimited Essequibo region, with the intention of justifying retaliatory and hostile actions against our nation,” said Rodríguez, a close ally of President Nicolás Maduro, during a televised address on Saturday.
Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López reaffirmed the government’s stance on Sunday, saying the military is taking Rodríguez’s accusations seriously.
“The Bolivarian National Armed Force remains on...
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