Minister Padrino López: Operation Lightning guarantees Venezuela's sovereignty

Published at: 31/01/2025 10:47 AM

This Friday, January 31, the sectoral vice-president of Defense and Sovereignty, Vladimir Padrino López, reaffirmed that Operation “Catatumbo Lightning” is being carried out to guarantee the integrity, sovereignty and independence of Venezuela as established by the Constitution.

“We do this because it is a constitutional mandate and also given the situation we are seeing beyond our borders, in the Colombian Catatumbo (...) a whole territorial dispute over the drug trafficking routes that are being waged between the armed groups that live there; that of course has caught our attention and we have decided to launch this Operation precisely to prevent the access of these groups, whatever they are called, to Venezuelan territory and to also guarantee all the good functioning of the internal order and democratic stability of our country,” said Padrino López from the Command Post of Operation “Catatumbo Lightning” in Santa Bárbara del Zulia.

He explained that during the operation, the more than 5 thousand troops deployed will carry out patterns of aerial reconnaissance, patrolling and searching, control of road axes and critical points, control of river axes, security of strategic facilities and basic services, destruction of drug processing camps, eradication of illicit crops and destruction of clandestine runways.

He reaffirmed that the main thing is to prevent the entry of these armed groups into Venezuelan territory, since these vulnerabilities, which exist at the borders between countries, are always used by imperial agents to undermine the territory.

“These situations of vulnerability, especially in border areas of all the States of the world, we always seek a margin, a zone, an area, a region to promote civil war, to promote the fragmentation of the State, to promote disorder and chaos, and with it then empires come here to reach in and become victims of the imposition of imperial measures, often accompanied by the multilateral mechanisms and institutions that play the game,” he said. .

Mazo News Team