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The renowned Venezuelan island of Margarita received 456 alleged Russian and Cuban tourists as part of an assumed plan of Nicolás Maduro’s regime to boost tourism; however, sources assure that within this group there are also members of the military.
The regime claims that this is a “strategic plan” within the framework of the “reactivation of the Moscow-Porlamar charter operation,” launched in 2021.
“Tourists (Russians) were arriving and were coming in good numbers until February, when the war broke out, and what is being done now is to resume that operation,” Viviana de Vethencourt, president of the island’s Chamber of Tourism, told EFE.
The passengers arrived aboard a charter flight of the Russian airline Nordwind, which had been working for months to operate in a “neutral” route avoiding U.S. and European airspace.
However, intelligence specialists assure that within this group of tourists there are also military personnel.
“Venezuela is greatly increasing military operations and is using tourism as a cover to get foreign military in,” Joseph Humire a specialist in global intelligence and security explained to El American.
“I don’t know in detail what Maduro is up to, but I’m afraid he is preparing something with Venezuela’s borders and above all, the maritime part. What I can assure is that they are not all tourists and that there are camouflaged military personnel,” he added.
New military bases on Venezuela’s maritime borders?
On September 29, Nicolás Maduro presided over an event in which he revealed that he had given secret orders for the establishment of new military bases.
“A new type of military base, not a traditional one. A new concept in its integration with the population, in the territorial occupation, in the surveillance capacity, in the armed reaction capacity;” Maduro said.
It is not known if the arrival of these tourists is directly linked to the installation of new military bases, as announced on September 29.
Sabrina Martín Rondon is a Venezuelan journalist. Her source is politics and economics. She is a specialist in corporate communications and is committed to the task of dismantling the supposed benefits of socialism // Sabrina Martín Rondon es periodista venezolana. Su fuente es la política y economía. Es especialista en comunicaciones corporativas y se ha comprometido con la tarea de desmontar las supuestas bondades del socialismo