Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López leads the official event for the celebration of the National Day of the Bolivarian Navy, July 24, 2025. Photo: Últimas Noticias.
Venezuela commemorated the 242nd birth anniversary of the Liberator Simón Bolívar, the 202nd anniversary of the Battle of Lake Maracaibo, and the National Day of the Bolivarian Navy on Thursday, July 24. High-raking officials of the Bolivarian Navy attended the event in the state of La Guaira and naval vessels were deployed as part of an aero-naval demonstration.
At the event, Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López expressed his admiration for the Navy’s work in defending Venezuelan waters. At the same time, he repudiated the incursion of a so-called oceanographic exploration ship into Venezuelan waters from Guyana.
“We are stubborn in defending our Atlantic front,” he said, condemning the unauthorized entry of the ship a few miles from Delta Amacuro. “That sea is not pending delimitation, it is our sea! It is our exit, and they enter right in the Delta, without asking for permission, and then they claim that they were in Guyanese waters.”
In his opinion, this was not a coincidence. “We are not messing around about our sovereignty; we will take all actions under the leadership of our commander-in-chief [President Nicolás Maduro] to defend our sovereignty in all our territory, whether in the sea or on land.”
Minister Padrino López highlighted that naval and aerial-marine patrols have been reinforced and units from the Bolivarian National Navy have been mobilized to permanently monitor the continental shelf and the country’s waterways.
He also emphasized the importance of the civic-military union and urged state institutions and the civilian population to remain vigilant, “working hand in hand with our naval force to ensure that no external actor undermines our territorial integrity.”
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Pride for the Bolvarian Navy
Minister Padrino López also expressed pride for all the personnel, soldiers, officers, and admirals of the Bolivarian Navy. “I feel proud of all its members, of everything they do to defend this immense sea, and they do it with perfection, with ethics, with professionalism.”
Thereafter, the minister of Defense awarded honors to participants of Operation Domingo Sifontes.
Among the naval vessels mobilized for the event were the Simón Bolívar Cadet Ship and an interceptor boat from the Coast Guard Command, commanded by the director of the Bolivarian Navy Military Academy, Rear Admiral Pedro Elías González.
Additionally, Mi-17 helicopters, coast guard patrol vessels, a multipurpose transport ship crewed by members of the Bolivarian Navy Corps of Engineers, water transport vessels, tugboats, coastal surveillance ships, amphibious armored vehicles, as well as F-16, K-8 Karakorum, Cessna 208, C-212 Aviocar, and Su-30 MK2 aircraft were deployed.
“Thanks to the support of our leader, commander-in-chief of the Bolivarian National Armed Force, Nicolás Maduro, we have achieved high levels of operational readiness, increased the well-being of our effective and efficient training levels,” said the commander of the Bolivarian Navy, Admiral Ashraf Suleimán Gutiérrez. “We will not rest in our mission to innovate, create, produce, and improve our maintenance processes through reverse engineering, adaptation of spare parts, and manufacturing of parts and pieces.”
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/SC/DZ
