Aid wars: US-Russia vie to ease Venezuelan crisis
Call it the aid MOSCOW >> wars.
The Trump administration is accusing President Nicolas Maduro of starving Venezuelans by blocking tons of American-supplied humanitarian aid stored next door in Colombia.
In Russia, the Kremlin sees the opposition’s plan to ram the aid across the border as a reckless pretext for ordering a U.S. military intervention.
As tensions in Venezuela mount ahead of a Saturday showdown over humanitarian aid, both sides are digging in, highlighting how the South American nation’s crisis has become the latest fault line in a battle for global influence by the former Cold War adversaries.
At stake is the future of Venezuela, a once oil-rich country gripped by hyperinflation and widespread shortages of food and medicine. Opposition leader Juan Guaido last month declared himself the country’s rightful president, a claim backed by the U.S. and dozens of other nations that argue Maduro’s re-election last year was fraudulent because several opposition candidates were barred from running.
Russia, long a staunch Maduro ally, has remained firmly behind the socialist leader.
Russian state news agencies said Wednesday that a Russian shipment of medicine and medical equipment had arrived in Venezuela. The reports did not give the size of the shipment or say what it contained, though they cited a diplomatic source as saying the delivery was made under the aegis of the World Health Organization.
Hours earlier Maduro had said 300 tons of medicine and other aid was on its way from Russia.
Carlos Romero, an international affairs professor at the Central University of Venezuela, said that Russia’s support for Maduro is more symbolic than consequential when compared to the intense pressure against the government being exerted by the U.S. in what he called “Washington’s backyard.”
Still, he said the two global powers were on a collision course in Venezuela, making it harder to negotiate a de-escalation of tensions.
“The fate of Venezuela is in the hands of outsiders,” said Romero, who has advised Venezuela’s opposition in the past. “It’s like two trains heading toward one another on the same track and every day that passes they gain speed.”
Guaido has called for “caravans” of tens of thousands of Venezuelans to join forces Saturday to carry the U.S. aid from Colombia into Venezuela, despite Maduro’s objections and the barricading of a key bridge linking Venezuela and the Colombian border city of Cucuta, where the aid is stored.
On Wednesday, Puerto Rico also announced it had dispatched a boat carrying 250 tons of aid earmarked for Venezuela, while Brazil’s far-right government said it would send supplies to the jungled northern state of Roraima on Saturday as well. Neither said how it expected to deliver the aid into Venezuela.
The Kremlin has compared the move to the deadly unrest movement in the Ukraine in 2013 that pushed out a pro-Russian president.
“If the organizers really want to just deliver some kind of humanitarian aid to the needy, why not use the specialized U.N. agencies that have extensive and invaluable experience in carrying out such operations?” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement.