Colombia denounces foreign interference by Russia and Iran on the border with Venezuela

The Bolivarian National Armed Forces of Venezuela is mobilizing troops to the border with Colombia with the support and technical assistance of Russia and Iran, declared Colombian Defense Minister Diego Molano, who described the possible deployment as foreign interference.

Molano did not reveal evidence, but citing intelligence sources, he assured that the mobilization took place on the Venezuelan side in front of the department of Arauca, the scene of a violent confrontation for the control of drug trafficking between the guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (ELN) and dissidents of the FARC who rejected a peace agreement.

“Foreign interference on the edge of the border. By intelligence we have the information that on the other side there are these confrontations that the ELN has, allied with the second Marquetalia, to remove the dissidents from the FARC”, he said at a press conference on the sidelines of an international anti-drug congress.

“We know that some men and units of the Bolivarian Military Force have also been mobilized towards the border with the support and technical assistance of Russia and with the support and technical assistance of Iran, there on the other side of the border.”, he added.

He explained that the confrontations for the control of drug trafficking and illicit economies began in the state of Apure, Venezuelan territory, and spread to Colombia.

“The situation in Arauca does not originate in Arauca, but on the other side of the border”, said the minister, explaining that the ELN united with the Second Marquetalia, a FARC dissident, are facing another faction of the former Revolutionary Armed Forces that rejected the 2016 peace agreement.

The Colombian Ombudsman’s Office revealed that the confrontation between rival illegal armed groups left 66 dead and 1,200 displaced in the department of Arauca, in January alone.

The violence in that oil and cattle-producing region of Colombia continues despite the fact that in early January President Iván Duque ordered the dispatch of more Army troops in an effort to assume territorial control and put an end to the bloodshed.

There was no immediate response from the Government of Caracas to the statements of the Colombian Defense Minister.

The Government of Colombia accuses the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, of protecting dissidents from the FARC and the ELN in the territory of the oil nation, although the socialist president insistently denies this.

The two countries share a porous 2,219-kilometer border with the presence of illegal armed groups.

Maduro announced at the end of last year that in 2022 his government would fight all Colombian illegal armed groups that are in Venezuelan territory.

Although the peace agreement with the FARC to end an armed conflict of more than five decades that has left some 260,000 dead initially reduced the violence in Colombia, over the years it increased again due to the fact that other armed groups such as the ELN and criminal gangs occupied the territories left by the demobilized rebels.