Kawsachun News
President Nicolas Maduro expresses grave concern that the conflict in Ukraine could expand and could turn into a Third World War. He warns of a media campaign and economic measures that aim to aggravate conditions and extend the scenario of war beyond Ukraine, to Europe, and beyond Europe to other regions of the planet. Below is a quick transcription of a part of President Maduro’s Monday remarks made during his extended meeting with the Council of Vice Presidents and the Military High Command.
We are doing everything in our power so that the year 2022 and the years to come, in whatever circumstances humanity may experience, will be good years for Venezuela. In any circumstance that may befall mankind. To preserve peace, national independence, sovereignty, the Constitution and the socioeconomic model of Venezuela.
At the center of our efforts is the conquering of new rights, the restoration of new social and economic rights for our people. A clear concept, very clear, that we have and that we apply. Everything depends on our own effort. Never will anyone ever, ever give us anything for free in this world. Nobody is going to give us anything. It is as simple as that. Everything depends on our effort, on our professional and scientific political capacity, on the union of Venezuelans. Everything depends on that. Today and always will be like that. It will depend on the national effort of our national union.
That is why we have made an assessment today of the situation of the armed conflict in Ukraine, of the special military operation that President Vladimir Putin decreed for the denazification of Ukraine, the demilitarization of Ukraine. The political, military, economic, energetic, financial, monetary and food impacts that the world is seeing today. The acceleration of a situation that tends to aggravate situations in different regions of the planet. We’ve made a concrete evaluation. I would like to thank Comrade General Vladimir Padrino, the generals and admirals have made a truly brilliant presentation with a broad knowledge of the historical and geopolitical reasons for the current situation in Ukraine and the armed conflict.
[They do so] without being influenced by the public campaign, away from the phenomenal and not based on appearances. With depth of knowledge and analysis on the ground we have managed to grasp the current situation. In this regard, I have to tell you from Venezuela, evaluating the strategic intelligence information that we handle from the world, evaluating the situation in Ukraine with great sincerity and with the desire for peace for the world.
We have to express that we are gravely concerned about the possibility of a war in Europe and an extension of this armed confrontation to other regions of the world. It seems to clone and incubate a public media campaign of hatred and a set of economic measures aimed at aggravating conditions and extending the scenario and today the territory of war, beyond Ukraine and Europe and beyond Europe to other regions of the planet. We are saying it today, using the method of objective analysis that we have used for years to forecast serious situations and prepare ourselves and to prepare in time to alert the world. And hopefully, with a warning in time, the madness that has taken hold of the most important leaders of the West of the world could be controlled. Hopefully.
But all the elements of the concrete analysis we have made, the geopolitical situation of the armed conflict in Ukraine and the diplomatic, political, economic and military triggers make us reaffirm our serious concern that this conflict may expand from the military point of view and may constitute a Third World War. Already, we can say that it has had worldwide impacts and brutal impacts on the price of energy, oil, gasoline and gas. Brutal impacts on the price of food, of fertilizers, brutal impacts on the price of transportation, of ships, of freight. Global impacts on insecurity, on the management of international relations. We have seen the report of the Executive Vice President on the impact this is going to have on food, goods and services worldwide and in our country. We are already taking measures to continue with the process of controlling inflation and these phenomena that may arise as a result of the war and the extension of the conflict.
It is very important to make this known, fellow men and women, friends who are listening to us here in the world, compatriots, it is very important. We are not just talking for the sake of talking. Today is still Monday, March 7th in Venezuela. Many people are listening in other regions of the world and it is already Tuesday, March 8th, International Women’s Day. I take this opportunity to convey to all the women of our homeland and of the world our congratulatory and affectionate embrace of solidarity and to call on the women of the world to fight for peace, for the reestablishment of an international order of mutual respect and peace. The women of the world have to be the vanguard in the struggle for the rights of the peoples, for peace, for justice, for equality, for a multi-polar, multi-centric world, without a hegemon empire, it is the woman who has to carry the struggle forward.
Today is Monday and we are here at 10:46 p.m. tonight in Caracas, Venezuela, at the Miraflores Presidential Palace. Here in the Simon Bolivar Hall, we are ringing the warning bell in a humble, simple, but very heartfelt, very meaningful way to the whole world.
We are not a people of cowards, we are not a Revolution of cowards. We are warriors and we are going forward. We, warriors, have demonstrated it in all the battles of all these years, always. We have a strategy, a reasoning, a sense of our struggle, a cause to defend a plan, a conscious will. We have a state, we have a people, we have a military force, we have a civic-military union and this has allowed Venezuela to preserve its national union, to preserve peace, to conquer peace, to build peace. But we are in a very dangerous moment and the Venezuelan Political and Military High Command has decided that we should ring the warning bell to alert the peoples and leaders of the world to seek peace. To seek conditions that will allow truly solid agreements in the negotiation process between the Russian Federation and Ukraine. The factors involved around Ukraine must encourage it to seek peace and abandon the positions it has had in the past, unfortunately. The military conflict must not be aggravated. The humanitarian corridors to protect the civilian population must be respected and sooner rather than later a substantial peace agreement can be achieved in Ukraine, between Russia and Ukraine.
There must be no intention to use the armed conflict in Ukraine to escalate a European war and escalate a war much further as some irresponsibly seek in the world. We say it modestly from the homeland of the Liberator Simon Bolivar. We say it modestly from Caracas, Venezuela. We have to take measures. We have already taken measures to protect our economy, to protect the right to food of our people.
We’re also taking measures in the field of diplomacy and politics to activate ourselves in a modest way. How can we activate ourselves, but in an influential way, in a moral way, so that on the various stages of the world we really work for peace agreements and for the escalation of the armed conflict in Ukraine. Those who provoked this conflict with decades of non-compliance with agreements, with decades of threats against Russia, with decades of preparing plans for the extension of NATO, are the first who have the responsibility to escalate this conflict and seek a favorable scenario of negotiation and agreement between the parties, Russia and Ukraine.
We have prepared and discussed a set of decisions of national and international character. Decisions in the national character to protect the distribution and supply of food to advance the wage plan and contractual and social rights of the working class. As I committed myself in the Poliedro to advance in the internal guarantee of the fuels that the country needs after having recovered, with our own effort, our own lung, as we have recovered the petrochemicals and the refinery in an advanced state of PDVSA. So, we must keep our plans alert and inform the people of any situation in the international arena. We will activate ourselves, Foreign Minister, in all the world forums, we are going to activate ourselves in all the world forums. Maintain communication with all foreign ministers at the global level and insist on the need for peace, on the need for dialogue, on the need for a fruitful negotiation and on the need to comply with the security guarantees that Russia has been demanding for a long time. Vital security guarantees for a gigantic power like Russia and peace guarantees for the peoples of the world.
That is the truth. That is the truth. De-escalate the hate media campaigns that have been activated in the media, in social media. In short, to activate at all levels in the work of dialogue, in the work of understanding. We have decided in this meeting to reactivate very strongly the process of national dialogue with all the political, social, economic, religious, cultural factors of the country.
Mexico’s dialogue received a tremendous blow, as you know. But we are asking for dialogue for the world, we have to set an example in the country and we are going to re-format the national dialogue process. We are moving towards a more inclusive dialogue process, more comprehensive, broader, inclusive, that reaches out to all Venezuelan men and women who want to move our country forward; to effectively recover our country and to provide all the political guarantees for the coming processes in the years to come, from now on.
There are special marked years and all political guarantees must be given in the national dialogue process. We are going to an immediate reformatting and a dynamization of the national political dialogue process. This is what I am announcing. For the meeting of all sectors for the Peace of Venezuela, for the recovery of Venezuela, for the plurality and political diversity of Venezuela. We have considered it vital as a strategic line.
Read more from President Nicolas Maduro’s statements here. (Posted below)
President Maduro on Meeting with U.S. Delegation
During President Nicolas Maduro’s extended meeting with the Council of Vice Presidents and the Military High Command, the President remarked on his meeting with U.S. government officials who traveled to Venezuela on Saturday. Below is a quick transcription of a part of President Maduro’s Monday remarks.
I would also like to comment that last Saturday night, a delegation from the government of the United States of America arrived in Venezuela. I received them here in the Presidential Palace, as delegations from governments of the world and especially from the government of the United States have been received on other occasions.
As Foreign Minister, I was tasked with receiving delegations from the Government of the United States together with President Chavez here. As President I’ve received delegations from the US government and Congress on several occasions. Now a new opportunity has arisen and a delegation has arrived. We had a meeting. I could qualify it as respectful, cordial, very diplomatic, between the delegation of the US government and the delegation of the Venezuelan government that I preside over. We held it in the main presidential office, in office number one.
The flags of the United States and Venezuela were there, and the two flags were beautifully united, as the flags of the United States and Venezuela should be. We spent almost two hours talking. I was accompanied by Dr. Jorge Rodriguez, world champion of dialogue, and my wife Cilia Flores. They both knew all the details of everything that was discussed, topics of interest that we have agreed to work on in an agenda going forward, topics of interest.
I thought it was very important to be able, face to face, to discuss issues of maximum interest for Venezuela and the world. And I ratify, as I said to the delegation, all our will, from diplomacy, from respect and from the highest hope for a better world. We will be able to advance an agenda that will allow for the well-being and peace of the peoples, of our hemisphere, of our region, of the whole of America, of Latin America and the Caribbean.
That is the main message of an important meeting. Dr. Jorge Rodriguez will surely give details in the next few days in a press conference so that he can be asked all the necessary questions. The talks, the coordination and a positive agenda between the government of the United States and the government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela will continue.
Starting Saturday, well, it began on social media. What you could call a news swarm. A news hysteria on social media. This version and that version saying I don’t know who was called, or who was not called. That this was said, that that wasn’t said, Reuters comes out. Reuters journalists write as if they had been at the meeting. The AP journalist, as if he lived in my house with me. Lying. All the versions that have come out: Pure lies, pure speculation.
No need for that. We stick to the truth. We stick to goodwill, to good diplomacy and to a good sense of reality, to advance peace in our region and in the world. The issues that were discussed, were discussed, the issues that were agreed upon were agreed upon.
And well, we will move forward. Dr. Jorge Rodriguez, you are authorized to speak at length about this conversation.
Quick transcription and translation by Kawsachun News
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