ABC News(CARACAS, Venezuela) — Amid political unrest in Venezuela, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday that President Nicolas Maduro is “ruling for the moment,” but cannot be part of the country’s future, adding that the Venezuelan people “will demand” that he leave office.
“Maduro can’t feel good. He’s ruling for the moment, but he can’t govern,” Pompeo told ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl on “This Week.” “There’s enormous poverty, enormous starvation, sick children that can’t get medicine, Jonathan. This is not someone who can be part of Venezuela’s future and whether that change takes place today or tomorrow or a week from now, one can’t predict.”
Pompeo added, “Maduro cannot feel good about the security of his position today, and he shouldn’t. Because the Venezuelan people will demand, ultimately, that he leave.”
Karl asked Pompeo if Maduro would still be in power if he did not have the support of the Cuban and Russian governments.
“Without the Cubans, there would be no possibility he would still be in power. They are — they are at the center of this,” the secretary said, noting Cuban security forces are guarding Maduro.
Karl pressed, “You said the Cubans. How about the Russians?”
“Oh the Russians — the Russians need to get out, too,” Pompeo said. “We want every country — Iran is in there today. They need to leave as well. Every country that is interfering with the Venezuelan people’s right to restore their own democracy needs to leave.”
Earlier this week, Pompeo charged that Russia had blocked U.S. efforts to get Maduro out of the country, persuading him at the last-minute not to take a waiting plane to Cuba.
The opposition-controlled National Assembly declared Juan Guaido interim president in January, but months of demonstrations and U.S. sanctions have not forced Maduro from his grip on power — even after a major uprising Tuesday.
That’s in large part because of Russian support, according to U.S officials. Russia sent at least 100 troops to rendezvous with Maduro’s security forces in March, and Russian officials have shielded him from sanctions or penalties at the United Nations Security Council, transferred his government’s assets to protect them from U.S. economic pressure and appear to have convinced Maduro to stay in power this week — after Guaido and the U.S. prematurely claimed that he’d won the allegiance of some top Maduro aides and a key portion of the military.
Venezuela has been intertwined with Russia through oil, arms, debt and geopolitical imperatives for decades.
Russia owns a significant portion of Venezuela’s oil fields through a state-backed oil firm, Rosneft, has sold billions in military equipment to the South American nation and loaned Maduro’s regime billions more – much of it reportedly still outstanding.
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