Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López at a press conference in Caracas on September 1, 2025. Photo: Jesus Vargas/Gettyimages.ru.
The Venezuelan government reported this Tuesday that a social media campaign, orchestrated by “far-right sectors” in the country, seeking to falsely report the “presence of a US helicopter” near its island coast.
For Caracas, this strategy aims to provide an excuse for “the US military forces themselves to stage an attack on the alleged aircraft,” with the goal of “provoking and fabricating an incident or false positive,” according to a statement signed by Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López.
“The above would serve as a pretext to justify an escalation of military aggression against our nation, just as US imperialism has done in other historical episodes such as the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964, in which it was alleged that its ships had been attacked by North Vietnamese floating units, in order to justify an increase in its participation in that country’s war,” the document warns.
According to Venezuelan authorities, the move “is part of the psychological operations embedded in the traditional US war playbook, designed to create fictitious scenarios as a precondition for armed interventions.”
‘Fatuous excuse’
On this occasion, Padrino asserts, the eventual US military aggression would be cloaked “under the fatuous excuse of the ‘fight against drug trafficking,'” but “in reality” it would seek “a forced regime change in Venezuela, which would in turn drag the region into a conflict with unforeseeable consequences.”
“We categorically reject and demand an end to these warmongering and cognitive warfare actions orchestrated by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Mauricio Claver-Carone, which seek to generate destabilization and anxiety among the population,” the document reads.
In conclusion, it is emphasized that, in line with the instructions of President Nicolás Maduro, the Bolivarian National Armed Force clings to “the pacifist tradition of the Venezuelan State,” but it is important to remember that the South American country has “the irreducible determination to defend its territorial integrity with firmness and serenity, in perfect civil-military-police unity, to guarantee the freedom, sovereignty, and independence of the Homeland.”
(RT)
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JB/SH
