The Venezuelan military says it has raised its alert level following the discovery of an alleged U.S. plot to fabricate an incident at an ExxonMobil offshore platform in the contested waters between Venezuela and Guyana to justify an armed conflict.
The Venezuelan Defense Ministry issued a statement on Sunday claiming the plot was designed to create a pretext for conflict in the long-contested Essequibo region—a mineral-rich area roughly the size of Florida that Venezuela claims as its own but has been under Guyanese control since an 1899 arbitration ruling.
The statement came a day after Vice President Delcy Rodríguez accused the United States, the Guyanese government, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, and Erik Prince—founder of the private military firm Blackwater—of conspiring to launch a military operation against Venezuela. Rodríguez claimed the “false flag” plot would begin with an attack on the ExxonMobil platform in the contested waters.
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