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President Trump told Russia on Wednesday it needs to stop meddling in Venezuela, as top members of his administration met with Fabiana Rosales, the woman that U.S. officials recognize as first lady. “We are with you 100 percent,” Mr. Trump told her. “Russia needs to get out.” Mr. Trump was referring to reports that Russia brought material and personnel to Venezuela, as other nations try to oust President Nicolas Maduro. The South American strongman considers Russia an ally. The U.S. and 50 other nations recognize Juan Guaido, who invoked constitutional powers to declare himself the interim president, as Venezuela’s rightful...

WASHINGTON/CARACAS (Reuters) - The United States on Monday accused Russia of “reckless escalation” of the situation in Venezuela by deploying military planes and personnel to the crisis-stricken South American nation that Washington has hit with crippling sanctions. The Russian planes and military personnel arrived outside the Venezuelan capital Caracas on Saturday, according to local media reports, two months after the Trump administration disavowed President Nicolas Maduro. Washington has recognised opposition leader Juan Guaido as the country’s legitimate president and demands that Maduro leave power, which Russia has described as a U.S.-backed coup against the socialist government.

military exercises on Venezuelan soil that President Nicolas Maduro called a sign of strengthening relations. Two Russian air force planes landed in Venezuela's main airport on Saturday carrying a Russian defense official and nearly 100 troops, according to a local journalist, amid strengthening ties between Caracas and Moscow. A flight-tracking website 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. Reporter Javier Mayorca wrote on Twitter on Saturday that the first plane carried Vasily Tonkoshkurov, chief of staff of the ground forces,...

Forces loyal to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro may have just committed one of their most brazen acts — one that threatens to plunge the country into even greater chaos. On Thursday, Venezuela’s intelligence forces detained the chief of staff for Juan Guaidó, the opposition leader who claims to be the country’s legitimate president and who is backed by the United States. In an overnight raid, they seized Roberto Marrero from his home shortly after also nabbing dozens of journalists and two state utility workers. This is potentially a massive escalation by Maduro and could signal a new phase in his...

VALENCIA, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuelan opposition leader and National Assembly head Juan Guaido said on Saturday he was launching a "new phase" in his push to oust President Nicolas Maduro, pledging to travel across the country before "reclaiming" the presidential palace. Guaido, who invoked the constitution in January to assume an interim presidency, saying Maduro's re-election was illegitimate, called on thousands of supporters to stay committed to what he dubbed "Operation Freedom." "Very soon, when we have visited and organized every inch ... we will go to Miraflores and reclaim what belongs to the Venezuelan people," Guaido said, referring to...

CARACAS (Reuters) - As Venezuela’s five-day power blackout left homes without water, Lilibeth Tejedor found herself looking for it on Monday in the last place she would have imagined - a drain pipe feeding into a river carrying sewage through the capital, Caracas. Tejedor, 28, joined dozens of people who had flocked to the Guaire river, which snakes along the bottom of a sharp ravine alongside Caracas’ main highway, to fill up a four-gallon (15 litre) plastic container. Unlike the fetid liquid flowing through the Guaire river, the water emerging from the pipe was at least clear. Those who gathered...

Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez continued to heap praise on fellow freshman Congresswoman Ilhan Omar early Sunday night — calling her “one of the most effective voices right now.” “Rep. Omar, a survivor of war, is one of the most effective voices right now at cutting through the authoritarian foreign policy tendencies of this administration,” tweeted Ocasio-Cortez. She linked back to a post that the Minnesota lawmaker put up earlier in the evening, criticizing President Trump’s handling of the crisis in Venezuela. “Trump and Elliott Abrams cannot be trusted to tell the truth about what’s happening in Venezuela,” Omar tweeted, along with...

The situation in Venezuela continues to worsen, as more and more massive power outages or blackouts, are now a constant in that embattle Latin American Country. The Maduro regime-controlled National Electric Corporation (Corpoelec) said that the latest power outage that affected 11 states, including the capitol of Caracas, was an energy attack or sabotage against the state. Venezuela’s legitimate President Juan Guaido, spun it differently, saying that the situation in that country was nothing more than chaotic due to the power outage, adding the outages only prove the inefficiency of Nicolas Maduro’s leadership.

The Trump administration is expelling dozens of officials loyal to Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro from the United States, a top administration official announced Friday. “Maduro supporters that abuse or violate human rights, steal from the Venezuelan people or undermine Venezuela’s democracy are not welcome in the United States,” Special Envoy Elliott Abrams told reporters at the State Department. “Neither are their family members, who enjoy a privileged lifestyle at the expense of liberty and prosperity of millions of Venezuelans.” “We are applying this policy to numerous Maduro-aligned officials and their families,” Abrams said, noting that privacy laws prevented him from...

At least 8 tons of gold were removed from the Venezuelan central bank's vaults last week, an opposition legislator and three government sources told Reuters, in the latest sign of President Nicolas Maduro's desperation to raise hard currency amid tightening sanctions. The gold was removed in government vehicles between Wednesday and Friday last week when there were no regular security guards present at the bank, Legislator Angel Alvarado and the three government sources said. "They plan to sell it abroad illegally," Alvarado said in an interview. The central bank did not respond to requests for comment. Alvarado and the government...

More than 300 Venezuelan soldiers have defected in just four days as the country plunges deeper into chaos. Soldiers who have sought refuge in Colombia since the weekend told the Associated Press that the catalyst for defection was the command from above to keep desperately needed humanitarian aid from their compatriots. "I was tired of people seeing me as just one more of them," Sgt. Jorge Torres said, referring to President Nicolas Maduro's socialist government. "I'm not." A high-stakes plan by the Venezuelan opposition to bring humanitarian aid into the country floundered over the weekend when National Guard troops loyal...

Venezuela's foreign minister Jorge Arreaza on Wednesday called for direct talks between President Nicolas Maduro and his US counterpart Donald Trump, to help ease the crisis gripping his country. "We are proposing the path of dialogue, even with the United States... Why shouldn't they meet, President Trump and President Maduro?" Arreaza said in an address at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva. "Enough of all this aggression," he added. The US has led a diplomatic campaign in support of opposition leader Juan Guaido who has declared himself interim president and is recognised by about 50 countries. Maduro has...

The embattled president said he'd be open to a summit with Donald Trump. A lightly edited transcript of Maduro's interview ABC News Anchor and Chief National Affairs Correspondent Tom Llamas, which aired on "World News Tonight," follows here: (at link)

Univision's star anchorman, Jorge Ramos, got a taste of what a real dictator is over in Caracas, when, after showing Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro a cell phone video of starving Venezuelans eating out of a garbage truck, found himself and his television crew shoved in a dark room for two and a half hours in detention, only to be released with their expensive television equipment and interview material stolen. Here's the Washington Post report of what went down: Journalist Jorge Ramos and his Univision team were detained at Nicolás Maduro's presidential palace in the Venezuelan capital Monday, reportedly because Maduro didn't like the...

Full Title: Venezuelan President Maduro's right-hand man evacuates his two youngest children to China under fake names as Mike Pence turns the screws with public show of support for rival Guaido (snip)...Ticketing receipts posted to social media confirmed the politician's children hopped on a Friday afternoon flight in Havana before making a short stop in Moscow on Saturday morning. After a nearly two-hour layover, the siblings headed off to Beijing where they landed shortly after midnight Sunday.

... Earlier, Pence met with Venezuela's interim President Juan Guaidó to express "resolute" U.S. support for Guido's leadership. Pence spoke alongside Guaidó and the President of Colombia Iván Duque Márquez during their trilateral meeting. Pence said Mr. Trump sent him to Colombia "to stand with you and to stand with our friends and our allies in Venezuela." He called it a "great privilege" to be able to meet with the interim president, adding, "we are with you 100 percent." The U.S. is "proud to recognize you as the legitimate president of Venezuela," Pence said. Pence urged the international body on...

Republican Sen. Marco Rubio shared an image Sunday showing a bloodied Muammar Gaddafi, the former authoritarian leader of Libya, in the moments before he was killed — drawing criticism from some who read the Florida lawmaker’s message as one of support for United States-led regime change in Venezuela. Rubio’s tweet had no text. It simply contrasted one picture of the authoritarian Libyan leader smiling in a white jacket and sunglasses, alongside another image...

With his stirring repudiation of socialism, both at home and abroad, President Trump is proving himself to be the very champion of liberty and freedom the world needs. While previous U.S. leaders have opposed totalitarian regimes, no American president since Ronald Reagan has confronted the evils of socialism as forcefully as Trump is doing today by supporting the people of Venezuela as they retake their country from the corrupt socialist dictatorship of disputed president Nicolas Maduro. President Trump deserves more credit than he is getting for taking this stance against an economic system that throughout its history has created nothing...

You don't often hear about protests in Cuba, despite the hellish conditions of that socialist dictatorship, but I suspect that's going to change, and maybe pretty fast. Alberto de la Cruz at Babalu blog reports that protests are breaking out on the communist island dictatorship in the wake of Venezuela's popular fight for freedom: Video from Cuba shows hundreds of Cubans marching on the streets of Havana this Saturday in protest of the communist Castro dictatorship. This rare show of massive dissent in Cuba comes on the eve of the Castro regime’s sham referendum vote to ratify a new communist constitution....

CARACAS, February 22. /TASS/. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Thursday expressed gratitude to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin and the Pan American Health Organization for providing the South American country with medicines. "I’m very thankful to the Pan American Health Organization and Russian President Vladimir Putin for their resolve in delivering medicines," Maduro said in a speech broadcast by Periscope app. Earlier, Russia handed over to Venezuela a cargo with medicines and medical equipment in the framework of the World Health Organization. The ceremony was held at the Caracas International Airport and attended by Russian Ambassador to Venezuela Vladimir Zaemsky...