Chavez claims his country will be attacked, a charge both the U.S. and Colombia denies, and is strengthening his country to counter any possible military conflict. "They are preparing a war against us," Chavez said during a televised address, repeating a charge he has been making for months. "Preparing is one of the best ways to neutralize it."
Russia of course is the main supplier of arms to Venezuela, recently opening a $2.2 billion line of credit for the purpose to sell more weapons. Russian arms sales since 2005 to Venezuela has been more than $4 billion, including 24 Sukhoi fighters, attack helicopters and about 100,000 kalashnikov rifles.
Chavez`s claim on Monday that Russian T-72 main battle tanks will be arriving soon will surely complicate the situation even further to possible U.S./Colombian intervention. His additional claim that thousands of missiles will also be arriving was unspecified of the type but Venezuela does have a growing arsenal of Russian-made Igla-1S surface-to-air missiles. There`s no doubt Venezuela will soon acquire these arms even if not more from Russia. Both Colombian and US forces should take notice and closely monitor the situation, treading lightly into any "possible" operation into Venezuela.
As we all know by now, US special forces are around and operate in the region - something that will always be denied. Venezuela too wouldn`t escalate into a full scale operation unless it felt directly or imminently threatened but would deal a nasty blow to any incursions made by "forces" on its soil.
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