The UN Security Council on Dec. 23 held an emergency session in the afternoon under the rubric of “Threats to International Security,” focusing on the U.S. attacks on Venezuela. Nations attending, in addition to the 15 UNSC members, included many Ibero-American countries: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Paraguay, Uruguay, Mexico, Panama, and among others, as well as Guyana and other UNSC rotating members.
Russian representative Vassily Nebenzia gave a scathing statement, saying that the United States has taken a designation “out of mothballs” to call the Maduro government “terrorist,” and then assert the right to “counter-terrorism” This is a “U.S. pseudo-legal method,” which is a “mendacious rationale that a decision by the U.S. authorities alone is enough to turn a sovereign State into a criminal enterprise,” to then justify attacks. Nebenzia further said that the United States is engaging in “piracy” on oil, and through military, economic and political pressure.
Nebenzia warned the other nations: “As soon as you are tempted to do something for the benefit of your people, you will be treated the same way as Venezuela is being treated now. So don’t ask for whom the bell tolls, the bell tolls for you.”
Moreover, Nebenzia ended by speaking further on the implications of what the United States is doing. He advised the U.S. to refrain from taking more action in order “to prevent a fatal error.” Nebenzia said that “humanity” is at stake. It was to humanity “President Trump having promised to rid humanity of conflicts.” Now the United States “continues to sow chaos in the Western Hemisphere.” This is “casting doubt on his true intentions in the global context.”
U.S. Ambassador Mike Waltz, after beginning with repeating the U.S. stance on Venezuela’s Maduro government, namely that Nicolás Maduro is “a fugitive from American justice,” and runs a criminal empire, and then stated remarkably bald lies that Venezuela is the center of drug running in the hemisphere. Waltz stated: “In its own 2025 World Drug Report, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime identified Venezuela as the key trafficking route in the entire Western Hemisphere for illegal drugs, and for illegal narcotics and materials entering the United States and increasingly, Europe.”
However, the UNODC’s report does not state this, so Waltz gets the UN Pinocchio award. The UN report states, for example, on cocaine, that the Andean countries are foremost in trafficking: “The report also highlights that the main cocaine trafficking flows continue to be from the Andean countries to North America and from the Andean countries to Europe, either directly or, to a lesser extent by way of West and Central Africa.” Otherwise, the principal routes into the U.S., in terms of cocaine and volume, “continue to be overland and via Pacific maritime routes, into Mexico and then into the U.S.”
