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Trump says Russia ‘needs to get out’ of Venezuela
President Trump said Wednesday that Russia had no business meddling in strife-torn Venezuela — and that the country’s military needed to abandon its mission in support of socialist strongman Nicolas Maduro.
“Russia needs to get out,” Trump declared in response to a reporter’s question during a White House meeting with Fabiana Rosales, the wife of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó.
Rosales is in the US to rally support for her husband and for Maduro’s ouster.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry argued this week that the Russian military personnel who arrived in Venezuela over the weekend had every right to be there.
In Moscow’s first comment on the deployment, foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said late Tuesday that Russia had sent personnel “in strict accordance” with the Venezuelan constitution and a bilateral agreement on military cooperation.
She did not say how many troops Russia has sent.
Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday had called Russian activity in Venezuela a provocation, and the rift between the two nuclear powers over how to solve the crisis in Venezuela widened following Moscow’s move.
Rosales met with Trump, Pence and other officials, and called the Maduro regime a “terrible dictatorship.”
“There’s repression. There’s prison. We’re fighting for life and death and we know that what will triumph at the end is life,” she told the president, who reassured her, “We are with you 100 percent.”
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