Russia has emerged as socialist Venezuela’s top foreign weapons provider and overall defense ally, seeking to undermine the United States in its backyard, a prominent U.S. senator and an expert declared on Tuesday.
Their comments came during an event sponsored by the Center for a Secure Free Society (SFS) as Venezuela’s U.S.-backed interim president announced the military would no longer support dictator Nicolás Maduro. The SFS released a report this week showing that the Venezuela, Russia, Iran, and China (VRIC) alliance is expanding.
During the SFS-sponsored discussion, Cruz described Russia as Venezuela’s top military ally while China serves as its purse, providing economic loans and surveillance technology, among other military equipment.
“Russia is building a security infrastructure in our backyard with Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.” Cruz declared, citing information obtained from a law-mandated Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report on Russian security cooperation with those Latin American countries.
"The strongest security partnership, however, that Russia has within Latin America is that of Venezuela. Russia is the regime’s largest arms supplier, with upwards of $11 billion in arms sales over the past two decades. … Just last year, Russia deployed two Tu-160 Blackjack nuclear-capable bombers to the Venezuelan military, along with ten attack helicopters the previous year." the senator added.
