The Venezuelan Armed Forces (FANB) incorporated 5,600 soldiers into its ranks on Saturday in amid the “threats” of the United Stateswhich deployed a military flotilla to the Caribbean in August that includes the world’s largest aircraft carrier.
In response to the US military maneuvers, Nicolás Maduro has called for strengthening military enlistment. As well as to close ranks against “imperialism”, as the United States government is usually referred to.
Officers who conducted the soldiers’ incorporation ceremony indicated that the new troops are “revolutionary, socialist fighters” and “deeply Chavistas, trained under the tactical method of revolutionary resistance.”
Maduro considers the Armed Forces, which swear loyalty to him, the “backbone of stability, peace, security and the future” from Venezuela.
“Venezuela has an Armed Force, together with the people, fused, trained, trained, moralized. Under no circumstances will we allow the invasion of an empire,” Colonel Gabriel Alejandro Rendón Vílchez said on Saturday.
Registrations to the FANB have increased due to tensions with the United States
Given the deployment of the United States in the Caribbean Applications to register in the Bolivarian National Armed Forces have increasedsaid General Javier José Marcano Tábata.
“In these moments where imperialism threatens our country in an illegal, arbitrary, lying, false, arrogant manner, our people, the young people, come by the thousands to join the Bolivarian National Armed Forces,” he stated during the event, held at Fuerte Tiuna, the largest military complex in Venezuela, in Caracas.
Washington accuses Maduro of head the alleged Cartel of the Suns. Since the beginning of September, US forces have killed 87 suspected drug traffickers sailing through the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific.
Maduro denies Washington’s accusations and affirms that this military deployment seeks to overthrow him to seize the Caribbean country’s large oil reserves.
The Venezuelan president has called on the military and police to maintain a “permanent offensive plan” to respond to the “imperialist aggression.”
The Venezuelan Armed Forces are made up of about 200,000 troops, plus another 200,000 police officers, according to official data. Maduro has also said that he has some eight million reservists from the Bolivarian National Militia.
