US eyes sanctions over Russian support for Venezuela

The United States will take action in response to growing Russian support for Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, a senior US official warned Monday. US President Donald Trump’s administration has sanctioned Maduro’s regime and called it a dictatorship after he was re-elected in 2018.

“We are looking at additional sanctions, personal sanctions, economic sanctions that we think will bring more pressure,” Elliot Abrams, the State Department’s Venezuela envoy, told reporters. Abrams, who did not specify what the sanctions would be, said the US had been looking closely at Russia’s role in Venezuela and would not allow the level of support to go unchecked.

Abrams said Russia was mainly interested in “the oil economy” in Venezuela, while Maduro has grown increasingly reliant on Moscow over the past year. “Russian companies are now handling more than two-thirds, more than 70 percent of Venezuelan oil,” Abrams said. “So the Russian role is increasingly important.”

Abrams did not speculate on whether Russia was involved in pushing Maduro to take control of the opposition-majority National Assembly on Sunday, which Washington currently considers the only democratic body in Venezuela.

Police had prevented opposition leader and self-proclaimed interim president Juan Guaido from entering the parliament, and in his absence Luis Parra, a corruption-tainted opposition lawmaker, declared himself parliament speaker.