While the authorities avoid specifying figures, identities and the real extent of the casualties, they confirmed that the wounded arrived in Havana this Wednesday, where they were received by senior officials of the regime.
MADRID, Spain.- The Cuban Government recognized this Wednesday, for the first time, that the island’s soldiers were injured during the recent United States operation in Venezuela on January 3, in which the dictator Nicolás Maduro was captured. The confirmation came after the arrival in Havana of a group of injured soldiers, transferred on an official flight and received at the José Martí International Airport by senior officials of the Communist Party, the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) and the Ministry of the Interior, as well as by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla.
The images broadcast on state television They show several of the injured in wheelchairs or with difficulties walking, although the authorities have not reported how many there are, what type of injuries they have or what their exact function was in Venezuelan territory. Neither medical details nor identities have been disclosed.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Cuba, in its official versionreferred to the wounded as “collaborators” and framed the events within a political narrative of condemnation of the United States, without providing verifiable data on the real extent of the casualties or the dimension of the Cuban military presence in Venezuela.
These soldiers were part of the security device that protected Maduro’s closest circle in Caracas.
Their evacuation occurs days after Havana admitted the death of at least 32 Cuban citizens during the attacks, whom the regime described as “combatants” and whose remains will arrive this Thursday morning at the José Martí International Airport. An official tribute ceremony is scheduled to be held and, subsequently, the funeral procession will travel along Rancho Boyeros Avenue to the headquarters of the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces. Starting at 10:00 am, the regime will open the room where the bodies will be veiled to the public.
The confirmation of injuries, added to that of deaths, reinforces the evidence about the deep level of penetration of Havana into the structures of the Chavista regime, despite the fact that for years it has presented that cooperation as strictly “technical” or “advisory.”
