As ten­sions be­tween Venezuela and the US con­tin­ue to soar, on Wednes­day night, Venezuela’s De­fence Min­is­ter, Gen­er­al Vladimir Padri­no López, an­nounced that Venezuela’s army, along with the mili­tias, has be­gun “Sov­er­eign Caribbean” mil­i­tary ex­er­cis­es.

On Sun­day, López warned T&T and Guyana that there would be a strong re­sponse if both coun­tries al­lowed the US to use them as a base.

The three-day mil­i­tary ex­er­cis­es are tak­ing place on the Venezue­lan is­land of La Or­chi­la, which is al­so used as a mil­i­tary base, sit­u­at­ed north of Cara­cas.

La Or­chi­la is lo­cat­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 564 kilo­me­tres north­west of Trinidad.

The De­fence Min­is­ter ex­plained that the joint aero­space task force will de­ploy air de­fence us­ing sur­veil­lance, sub­marines, and aer­i­al drones to mon­i­tor the sec­tor and eval­u­ate their of­fen­sive ca­pa­bil­i­ties.

The ex­er­cis­es will in­volve 12 ships, 22 air­craft, and 20 small boats from the Spe­cial Naval Mili­tia.

There will al­so be the de­ploy­ment of the Buk an­ti-air­craft mis­sile sys­tems and ZU-23 ar­tillery sys­tems.

Re­gard­ing the de­ploy­ment of the joint mar­itime task force, López said, “There will be a sig­nif­i­cant de­ploy­ment of Bo­li­var­i­an Navy ves­sels to car­ry out coastal fire, am­phibi­ous land­ings, and cap­ture beach­heads,” among oth­er op­er­a­tions.

Twice on Wednes­day, Venezue­lan Jus­tice Min­is­ter Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo crit­i­cised T&T’s Gov­ern­ment’s sup­port for the Unit­ed States mil­i­tary pres­ence in the Caribbean, say­ing it is now en­dan­ger­ing the lives of fish­er­folk in the Caribbean re­gion.

Ear­li­er this week, US Pres­i­dent Trump an­nounced that the US mil­i­tary struck an­oth­er Venezue­lan boat that he claimed was be­ing op­er­at­ed by a drug car­tel and was head­ed to the Unit­ed States.

Trump said three men were killed in Mon­day’s at­tack.

Speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence on Wednes­day, Ca­bel­lo ac­cused T&T’s Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar of “sen­tenc­ing fish­er­men to death.”

“The first one who came out to thank the Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment was the Prime Min­is­ter of T&T. She was sen­tenc­ing her fish­er­men to death, and yet she came out to thank the Unit­ed States for that ac­tion. I think she de­clared that around 5 am in the morn­ing af­ter a day of joy or a night of joy. But what have the fish­er­men done?”

Lat­er on Wednes­day night, on his week­ly TV pro­gramme, Con El Ma­zo Dan­do, Ca­bel­lo once again con­demned T&T’s Prime Min­is­ter, claim­ing that her Gov­ern­ment sup­ports the Amer­i­can’s ac­tions against fish­er­folk.

Cu­ba con­demns US ac­tions

Mean­while, the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Gov­ern­ment of Cu­ba has con­demned what it de­scribes as es­ca­lat­ing ac­tions by the Unit­ed States aimed at jus­ti­fy­ing mil­i­tary ag­gres­sion against the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic of Venezuela.

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, Cu­ba said the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of US mil­i­tary troops and equip­ment in the Caribbean Sea, along with the use of force against civil­ian crafts and the de­ten­tion of ves­sels in vi­o­la­tion of in­ter­na­tion­al reg­u­la­tions, high­light­ed the hos­tile na­ture of the op­er­a­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to the state­ment, the true mo­tive be­hind the US strat­e­gy is to seize Venezuela’s oil and nat­ur­al re­sources. Cu­ba warned that the de­ploy­ment of US forces in the re­gion is a provo­ca­tion in­tend­ed to trig­ger a con­flict that would com­pel Venezuela to de­fend its sov­er­eign­ty.

Cu­ba stressed that any di­rect mil­i­tary ag­gres­sion against Venezuela would car­ry se­ri­ous con­se­quences for peace, sta­bil­i­ty, and se­cu­ri­ty in the Amer­i­c­as.