Spanish
Venezuela activated the Independence 200 operations exercise from the early hours of this Saturday in the eastern states of the country, amid the US deployment and the bombings of small boats in international waters.
Through his Telegram account, President Nicolás Maduro reported the activation of the Integral Defense Operational Zones (ZODI), in the states of Anzoátegui, Monagas and Bolívar, "a corridor that goes from the Caribbean Sea to the Orinoco and to the south of the border with Brazil".
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"The entire military force is deploying all its positions, the entire weapons system and, in addition, the entire Bolivarian militia, the entire military, popular, and police force is activated," said the president, who later announced that the states of Carabobo, La Guaira, Zulia, Falcón and Aragua were also carrying out the military defense exercise. In this regard, he assured that there are currently 27 simultaneous territorial actions active with the objectives of "preventing any strategic paralysis", refining "the national machinery to guarantee peace with sovereignty, and the right to the future", as well as perfecting "the capacity to respond to any scenario". "Day by day we are activating the Integral Defense Zones state by state, and the full development of the 27 actions in perfect patriotic union, in perfect national union, is extraordinary. Our people are winning peace, because we have the right to peace," he asserted. The operation was launched with the deployment of more than 1,500 men and women only in Monagas, from where the Minister of the Interior, Diosdado Cabello, declared that the nation is prepared to "face the different threats that hang over the homeland due to imperialism".- In August, international media reported of a U.S. military deployment in the southern Caribbean, supposedly to confront drug cartels. At the same time, the U.S. Attorney General, Pam Bondi, doubled the reward for information leading to the arrest of the Venezuelan president under the accusation —never substantiated— of leading a "drug trafficking cartel".
- Following the U.S. military deployment, the foreign ministers of blocs such as the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac) and the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) have asked that the declaration of the region as a zone of peace be respected.
- Maduro maintains that his country is the victim of "a multiform war" orchestrated from the U.S. in the interest of promoting a "regime change".
