Jesse Ramdeo

An in­ter­na­tion­al and pub­lic af­fairs ex­pert says the re­cent pledge of sup­port by Venezuela’s Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro for Rus­sia’s in­va­sion of Ukraine is a re­gion­al con­cern.

A state­ment from the Krem­lin on Tues­day claimed Maduro backed Rus­sia’s leader Vladimir Putin via a tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion.

The move by neigh­bour­ing Venezuela comes as Rus­sia’s in­va­sion of Ukraine en­tered its sev­enth day yes­ter­day.

Heavy at­tacks on cities have re­sult­ed in climb­ing civil­ian ca­su­al­ties and the evac­u­a­tion of over six hun­dred thou­sand peo­ple.

Maduro al­so lashed out at desta­bil­is­ing ac­tions by the US and NA­TO and raised con­cerns with what he de­scribed as a west­ern cam­paign of lies and dis­in­for­ma­tion.

How­ev­er, Dr Pat­sy Lewis, Di­rec­tor of Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean Stud­ies at Brown Uni­ver­si­ty, ad­vised re­gion­al lead­ers to not on­ly be on alert but al­so strate­gic in how they re­spond to the re­cent de­vel­op­ment.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on Wednes­day Lewis said, “The Caribbean has to be very care­ful how it re­lates to the big pow­ers, we can­not give the Unit­ed States any rea­son to be more in­ter­ven­tion­ist in the re­gion and to use geopo­lit­i­cal lens for their re­la­tion­ship with the Caribbean.”

On Tues­day, T&T per­ma­nent rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the Unit­ed Na­tions Am­bas­sador Den­nis Fran­cis con­demned Rus­sia’s ag­gres­sion to­wards the Ukraine, say­ing the con­flict could have se­ri­ous con­se­quences on small­er states.

Mean­while, Lewis ex­plained why she be­lieved the Venezue­lan leader may have shot him­self in the leg by hold­ing dis­cus­sions with Putin.

“I think its a mis­take it’s a very short-sight­ed act on Maduro’s be­half, In 1979, the Grena­da rev­o­lu­tion­ary gov­ern­ment vot­ed in favour of the So­vi­et Union in­va­sion of Afghanistan and that sealed its fate in terms of the US’ hos­til­i­ty to­wards the rev­o­lu­tion.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to For­eign and Cari­com af­fairs min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne for a re­sponse on Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion on the lat­est de­vel­op­ment.

Browne, who is in Be­lize for the Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment meet­ing, said the mat­ter in­volv­ing Venezuela’s back­ing of Rus­sia was one that had en­gaged the at­ten­tion of lead­ers.

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