Venezuela will deploy military vessels to Caribbean and other waters to combat drug trafficking

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela will send military vessels to the Caribbean Sea and other waters to combat drug trafficking, the country’s defense minister announced Tuesday. The move comes as tensions with the U.S. simmer over the deployment of three warships to the region.

Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López said the vessels will patrol the Gulf of Venezuela as well as the country’s “territorial waters” in the Caribbean. In an Instagram reel, Padrino added that about 15,000 members of the armed forces will participate in efforts on land and at sea to fight “ the armed, terrorist, drug-trafficking groups operating on the border” with Colombia.

Padrino announced the operation more than a week after the U.S. government announced the deployment of three guided-missile destroyers to the waters off Venezuela to combat threats from Latin American drug cartels. Venezuela’s initial response to the deployment was to call on Venezuelans to enlist in a volunteer militia meant to assist the armed forces in the defense of external and domestic attacks.

The move to deploy U.S. destroyers and personnel comes as U.S. President Donald Trump pushes for using the military to thwart cartels he blames for the flow of fentanyl and other illicit drugs into American communities and for perpetuating violence in some U.S. cities.

On Monday, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro insisted during a weekly television show that his country, unlike neighboring Colombia, is “free of coca leaf crops and free of cocaine production.” He also criticized the U.S. government for not addressing the drug consumption within its borders.

In a separate announcement Tuesday, Padrino said an ongoing operation in Venezuela’s northeastern corner had resulted in the dismantling of shipyards where criminals intended “to manufacture semisubmersibles and boats to transport drugs by sea” to markets in Europe and North America.