During the Jan. 5 emergency UN Security Council session on Venezuela, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia bitingly condemned what he called the U.S.’s “cynically perpetrated crime” in Caracas, during which U.S. Delta forces kidnapped President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, in an operation which also left 80 Venezuelans and Cubans dead. Many saw this shocking act of aggression “a harbinger of a return to an era of lawlessness and U.S. domination by force, chaos and injustice,” he stressed.
Nebenzia warned Washington: “[T]he bell now tolls across the region, ringing for every country of the Western Hemisphere. The bell is also ringing for all UN member States and for the future of the Organization itself. Failing to hear this today is tantamount to showing cowardice and the lack of principles, thus essentially blessing further encroachments on international law and simply rejecting civilized conduct in inter-state relations.”
