The president, Donald Trump, predicted today that time will give him reason in his insistence that Russia withdrew the “majority” of its military personnel from Venezuela, a claim that last week generated a disagreement with the Kremlin.
“In the end you will see who is right, just watch, let’s see who is right, in the end, I am right,” Trump said when he received his Polish counterpart, Andrzej Duda, in the Oval Office.
Trump responded to a question about the statement he made on Twitter last week, when he said that Russia had informed the White House that “they have withdrawn most of their staff from Venezuela.”
The Kremlin indicated later that it had not transmitted any official message in this regard to the US Administration, and the Russian military corporation Rostec affirmed that Russian technical specialists continue to arrive periodically to repair and maintain the equipment supplied to the country.
However, Russian President Vladimir Putin admitted last week that it is possible that part of Russian personnel has already left the Latin American country.
“It is very likely that our specialists, but not only the military, but also the industrialists, have finished some work there,” Putin said during an interview with the heads of the main world news agencies, including the president of the Agency. Efe, Fernando Garea.
It was The Wall Street Journal that originated, before Trump’s tweet, the debate about the alleged reduction of the Russian contingent in Venezuela.
In early June, the New York newspaper said that Russia had reduced Rostec’s contingent of specialists from a thousand people to “a few dozen”, citing a source “close to the Russian Ministry of Defense”, although the corporation publicly denied that extreme.
Trump is scheduled to meet with Putin during the G20 summit later this month in Osaka (Japan), and the issue of Venezuela is expected to be on the agenda, where the US it supports – like 50 other countries – the opposition leader Juan Guaidó, while Russia maintains its support for the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro.
President Trump already warned that Russia had to “leave” Venezuela last March, when two planes with about 100 Russian soldiers landed near Caracas for what Moscow described as a mission to maintain equipment supplied to Venezuela.
But Trump has avoided an open confrontation with Putin, and after speaking with him on the phone a month ago, he came to the point of contradicting his government and assuring that the Russian leader was “not thinking at all about getting involved in Venezuela.” (EFEUSA) .-
