Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro launched military exercises with around 5,600 soldiers in Guyana's border area on Thursday (December 28) in “response to provocation” by the United Kingdom, which sent a warship to Guyana amid the Essequibo crisis.
“I have ordered the initiation of a joint operation by all Bolivarian National Armed Forces [vénézuéliennes] in the Eastern Caribbean, on the Atlantic coast, a joint defense operation in response to the provocation and threat to the peace and sovereignty of our country by the United Kingdom,” said President Nicolas Maduro during a radio and television broadcast. in which he showed images of warships and fighter planes patrolling the area.
The British patrol ship HMS Trent will arrive in Guyana on Friday and is scheduled to take part in military exercises in Guyanese waters for “less than a week”. The ship is not expected to dock in Georgetown, a Guyana foreign affairs source said. HMS Trent, which is normally based in the Mediterranean, was sent to the Caribbean in early December to combat drug trafficking.
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Territorial dispute
In a press release, the Venezuelan government “categorically rejected the arrival of the ship (…), which constitutes an act of hostile provocation.” “The presence of this military vessel is extremely serious,” which is why “Venezuela urges the Guyanese authorities to take immediate steps to withdraw HMS Trent and to refrain from further involving the military powers in the territorial dispute,” the text adds.
About 125,000 people, or a fifth of Guyana's population, live in Essequibo, which occupies two-thirds of the country's land area. Venezuela claims that the Essequibo River should be the natural border, as it was in 1777 during the time of the Spanish Empire. Guyana argues that the English colonial-era border was ratified by an arbitration court in Paris in 1899.
Tensions rose after Guyana's introduction of oil tenders in September and the subsequent referendum organized in Venezuela on December 3 on the annexation of Essequibo, a 160,000 square kilometer area rich in oil and natural resources and administered by Georgetown of Venezuela claimed.
According to Mr. Maduro, in the first phase of Venezuelan military exercises, 5,682 fighter jets with F-16 (American) and Sukhoi (Russian) fighter jets patrolled the area.
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