Donald Trump with Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva at a meeting in Kuala Lumpur on Sunday, October 26, 2025, as part of the ASEAN summit. Photo: X/@LulaOficial.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva met Sunday with US President Donald Trump during the 47th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where they discussed regional issues and tariffs. The Brazilian president also offered to serve as a mediator between Venezuela and the United States to reduce tensions created by unprecedented levels of US military threats and rhetorical escalation against the Venezuelan government.
“President Lula raised the issue and said that Latin America and South America, specifically where we are, is a region of peace, and he offered to be a contact, an interlocutor, as he has been in the past, with Venezuela, to seek mutually acceptable and appropriate solutions,” said Brazilian Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira.
Tensions between the US and Venezuela have escalated in recent weeks. The US military has attacked at least ten small boats in the Caribbean-Pacific region in the last eight weeks, killing at least 43 people, under the pretext of combating drug trafficking, according to the news site Brasil 247.
The United States confirmed the deployment of the Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier, the world’s largest, to South American waters, along with destroyers and escort fighter jets, in one of the most threatening US moves regarding the Western Hemisphere since the Cold War. The naval deployment follows joint maneuvers with Panama and Trinidad and Tobago, the former a Caribbean country located a few kilometers off the Venezuelan coast, which has heightened tensions in recent hours.
Venezuela’s reaction
In response, President Nicolás Maduro reiterated that the country is completely free of drug trafficking and highlighted the progress made in Venezuela since the expulsion of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
Maduro reiterated that the break with the US agency marked a turning point in the fight against drug trafficking. “Since we broke with the DEA, the largest drug cartel in the world, Venezuela has been able to advance its strategy autonomously and sovereignly. And today, Venezuela is a country completely free of drug trafficking and everything else,” he stated.
United Nations and international specialized agencies have reported over the last decades that Venezuela is not a drug producing country and that only about 5% of the cocaine produced in Colombia passes through its territory on its way mainly to the European market.
Brazilian diplomats warn that any offensive against Venezuela could trigger an unprecedented regional destabilization spiral that could end with massive migration trends toward the US and Europe.
Brazil has also openly criticized the Venezuelan government in recent years, blocking Venezuela’s entrance to BRICS last year. As such, President Lula is not viewed positively by many in Venezuela.
Many analysts explained that Trump’s amicable approach toward Lula in Kuala Lumpur is a strategy to appease Brazil amid rising tensions in Latin American and the Caribbean created by controversial and illegal US military actions in the region in recent months.
(Últimas Noticias)by Karla Patiño with Orinoco Tribune content
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/SA
