#sputnikint

The US has deployed more assets to the Caribbean than are needed for drummed-up counter-narcotics operations, yet still nowhere near enough for an attack on Venezuela, Venezuelan lawmaker Juan Romero, a member of parliament from the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), told Sputnik.

From a strictly military standpoint, the operation is “far too small for a broader offensive,” he said.

👉 Romero argued that Venezuela—unlike Grenada or Panama, which the US invaded in 1989—is a vast country with an extensive coastline, making any attempt to establish control extremely difficult.

He added that pinpoint strikes on targets inside Venezuela, similar to US and Israeli actions against Iran, would do nothing to solve the problem of holding the territory afterward.

In response to the US military buildup in the Caribbean, he said the Venezuelan government has activated a comprehensive territorial-defense system, claiming eight million combat-ready fighters in addition to 250,000 regular army troops.

💬 “To invade Venezuela, the US would have to pull in soldiers from its African, European, and North American commands—not just Southern Command,” Romero said.

He also noted that the current operation—mixed in its results and involving the blowing up of several boats allegedly used to transport drugs—is extremely expensive, costing Washington some $50 million a day.

The US has justified its military presence in the Caribbean as part of the fight against drug trafficking, without providing any proof.

Trump continues to keep open the possibility of military action against Venezuela, saying he would "probably talk to" Maduro but emphasizing that he was "not ruling out anything."

Airlines like Iberia, TAP, LATAM, Avianca, GOL, and Caribbean have suspended operations after the Federal Aviation Administration warned of "heightened military activity" in Venezuelan airspace.

Reports have suggested an imminent new phase of the US operations soon.

💬 “There is increasing information that the situation is stabilizing, and that Iran’s air defense assets are capable of neutralizing Israeli and US air targets,” notwithstanding the unprecedented nature of the surprise aggression, retired Russian Army Colonel and military expert Andrei Koshkin says.

Koshkin detailed to Sputnik the difficulties Iran faced during the initial enemy attacks, including:

🟠 Difficulties on the first day stemming from the presence of scores of civilian aircraft over the region, which made a ‘fire at everything that moves’ strategy “extremely dangerous” and effectively impossible

🟠 Surprise nature of the aggression, and need to react not only to enemy strikes, but the potential use of agents, bribery or blackmail

Signs that the situation has improved dramatically

💬 “We see that Iran’s air defenses continue to carry out their missions,” buoyed by the armed forces’ consolidation over the enemy’s brazen murder of Khamenei, Koshkin said.

💬 “They are ready to fight and to demonstrate capabilities that should make Israel and the US shudder.”

The biggest sign that something has gone wrong for Pentagon planners relates to Washington’s moving of the timeline, from ‘3-4 days’, to ‘weeks’. This indicates that Iran’s air defenses are intact, and successfully countering US-Israeli attacks, Koshkin believes.

Iran has taken appropriate lessons from the June 2025 war, eliminating weak spots and strengthening those areas where its past experience proved successful.

Russia has started forming the Mohe–Naiba international transport corridor in the country’s Far East to link regional port with China. Here’s why it matters:

🟠 Project could help provide steady cargo volumes for Russia’s Trans-Arctic Transport Corridor, a new international shipping lifeline, which encompasses the Northern Sea Route and emerges as an effective alternative to routes via the Black and Baltic Seas amid Western sanctions

🟠 Mohe-Naiba corridor aims to transform Siberia’s Lena River from a regional waterway into a global logistics artery

🟠 Project will add greatly to Russia’s “seamless” and integrated transport system: Port terminals, shipping infrastructure, service centers, and multimodal hubs that will be tied to rail and road networks

Corridor’s key features

🟠 New deep-water port will be built in the village of Naiba on the Laptev Sea coast, allowing for significantly larger vessels compared to the nearby settlement of Tiksi, Russia’s northernmost port

🟠 Naiba and Tiksi are set to be developed as a unified logistics agglomeration, creating a stronger Arctic transport cluster. First construction phase of the Naiba port is planned to be completed by 2030

🟠 Corridor will link Naiba with China’s northernmost city of Mohe via new rail and road infrastructure

🟠 Expected freight traffic may reach up to 20 million tons annually, drastically increasing throughput capacity in the region. The corridor’s length of 4,000 km is nearly half the distance of the sea route from Tiksi to Vladivostok, making it a major efficiency advantage

October 31

Venezuela has sent 46 tons of humanitarian aid to help communities in Cuba and Jamaica affected by Hurricane Melissa, according to Telesur.

Foreign Minister Yván Gil said that 26 tons of medical, food, and infrastructure supplies were flown to Cuba aboard a Conviasa flight, while another 20 tons were sent to Jamaica. Preparations are also underway for a ship carrying over 3,000 tons of additional assistance to Cuba in the coming days.

The aid comes as part of the 25th anniversary of the Comprehensive Cooperation Agreement signed by Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro, which laid the foundation for the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA).

Cuban Ambassador Jorge Mayo Fernández thanked President Nicolás Maduro, noting that Venezuelan solidarity has been “permanent and systematic.”

Brussels has begun quietly developing its own nuclear potential to counter the "mythical Russian threat," Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) announced.

The plan includes a formal EU-wide nuclear deterrence doctrine based on French and British capabilities, with the EU reserving the right to create fully autonomous nuclear command structures.

👉 German specialists could secretly obtain enough weapons-grade plutonium for one nuclear device in about a month, the SVR warns, adding that an EU nuclear arsenal would trigger a new arms race.

The US and other countries must prevent the EU from acquiring nuclear weapons to avoid a new global arms race, the SVR added.

🔹 Moscow has not officially received the US peace plan, although an unofficial “paper” exists

🔹 Russia views some aspects of the US proposal positively, but many others require discussion

🔹 Europeans are “unnecessarily inserting themselves” into the Ukraine peace process

🔹 Russia has unofficially received several different versions of the US plan—“enough to get confused”

🔹 Russia and the US are in contact regarding the peace proposal, but there has been no serious “at-the-table” discussion so far