Two Russian air force planes carrying a Russian defense official and nearly 100 troops landed at Venezuela’s main airport on Saturday, according to media reports, amid strengthening ties between Caracas and Moscow.
A flight-tracking Web site showed that two planes left from a Russian military airport bound for Caracas on Friday, and another flight-tracking site showed that one plane left Caracas on Sunday.
That comes three months after the two nations held military exercises on Venezuelan soil that President Nicolas Maduro called a sign of strengthening relations, but which the US criticized as Russian encroachment in the region.
Photo: Reuters
Reporter Javier Mayorca wrote on Twitter on Saturday that the first plane carried Vasily Tonkoshkurov, Russian chief of staff of the ground forces, adding that the second was a cargo plane carrying 35 tonnes of material.
An Ilyushin IL-62 passenger jet and an Antonov AN-124 military cargo plane left for Caracas on Friday from Russian military airport Chkalovsky, stopping along the way in Syria, according to flight-tracking Web site Flightradar24.
The cargo plane left Caracas on Sunday afternoon, according to Adsbexchange, another flight-tracking site.
The flights carried officials who arrived to “exchange consultations,” wrote Russian government-owned news agency Sputnik, which quoted an unnamed source at the Russian embassy.
“Russia has various contracts that are in the process of being fulfilled, contracts of a technical military character,” Sputnik quoted the source as saying.
A Reuters witness saw what appeared to be the passenger jet at the Caracas Airport airport on Sunday.
The Venezuelan Ministry of Popular Power for Communication and Information did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
The Russian ministries of defense and foreign affairs did not reply to messages seeking comment.
The Kremlin spokesman also did not reply to a request for comment.
US President Donald Trump’s administration has levied crippling sanctions on the OPEC nation’s oil industry in efforts to push Maduro from power and has called on Venezuelan military leaders to abandon him.
Maduro has denounced the sanctions as US interventionism and has won diplomatic backing from Russia and China.
In December last year, two Russian strategic bomber aircraft capable of carrying nuclear weapons landed in Venezuela in a show of support for Maduro’s government that infuriated Washington.
Maduro on Wednesday last week said that Russia would send medicine “next week” to Venezuela, without describing how it would arrive, adding that Moscow last month had sent about 300 tonnes of humanitarian aid.
Venezuela last month had blocked a convoy carrying humanitarian aid for the crisis-stricken country that was coordinated with the team of Venezuelan National Assembly President leader Juan Guaido, including supplies provided by the US, from entering via the border with Colombia.
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