Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin yes­ter­day reaf­firmed his sup­port for Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro, one day af­ter the Unit­ed States’ seizure of an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela.

Venezuela’s El Na­cional news­pa­per re­port­ed that Putin ex­pressed his back­ing for Maduro in a tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion be­tween the two lead­ers.

Putin’s sup­port comes in the face of heavy US mil­i­tary de­ploy­ment in the Caribbean and the US cam­paign against nar­co-traf­fick­ing in the re­gion.

El Na­cional re­port­ed that the Krem­lin, in a sum­ma­ry of the call, said Putin “ex­pressed sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Venezue­lan peo­ple and con­firmed his sup­port for the Maduro gov­ern­ment’s pol­i­cy aimed at pro­tect­ing na­tion­al in­ter­ests and sov­er­eign­ty in the face of grow­ing ex­ter­nal pres­sure.”

Ac­cord­ing to the Russ­ian pres­i­den­cy, the two lead­ers al­so con­firmed their “mu­tu­al com­mit­ment” to the im­ple­men­ta­tion of Russ­ian-Venezue­lan projects, es­pe­cial­ly in the eco­nom­ic, en­er­gy and trade fields.

Maduro, a loy­al al­ly of Putin, an­nounced in May a new rap­proche­ment be­tween Moscow and Cara­cas with the sign­ing of a co­op­er­a­tion treaty.

In Au­gust this year, the US be­gan de­ploy­ing war­ships and marines to the Caribbean, cit­ing the need to com­bat drug car­tels.

On Sep­tem­ber 2, the US start­ed ki­net­ic strikes on sus­pect­ed drug traf­fick­ing boats of­fi­cials claimed were leav­ing Venezuela to trans­port il­le­gal drugs to the US and oth­er coun­tries in the West­ern hemi­sphere.

As of De­cem­ber 4th, at least 87 peo­ple have been killed in 22 strikes on 23 ves­sels, in­clud­ing 11 ves­sels struck in the Caribbean Sea and 12 in the East­ern Pa­cif­ic.

Mean­while, the White House said yes­ter­day the oil tanker seized off the Venezue­lan coast will trav­el to an Amer­i­can port, where US au­thor­i­ties in­tend to take pos­ses­sion of its oil car­go. The Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment re­act­ed by call­ing the seizure “a brazen rob­bery and an act of pira­cy” and said it will go to ex­ist­ing in­ter­na­tion­al bod­ies to de­nounce what hap­pened. Re­ports al­so sur­faced yes­ter­day that the US was prepar­ing to seize more tankers off the Venezue­lan coast.

US troops seized the oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, which was false­ly fly­ing a Guyana flag on Wednes­day. US At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Pam Bon­di post­ed videos of the seizure on her X (for­mer­ly Twit­ter) ac­count a few hours af­ter it oc­curred.

T&T Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, when asked about the seizure of the oil tanker, is quot­ed as say­ing in a me­dia re­port, “I clear­ly said that the new radar sys­tem as­sists with the de­tec­tion of Venezue­lan crude oil sanc­tion-bust­ing ac­tiv­i­ties and traf­fick­ers who have been con­duct­ing de­liv­er­ies of nar­cotics, firearms, am­mu­ni­tion, and mi­grants in­to our coun­try from Venezuela.”