The Duran Podcast - Calm before the storm in Venezuela & Colombia w/ Patrick Lancaster and Angelo Giuliano

Episode Date: December 23, 2025

Calm before the storm in Venezuela & Colombia w/ Patrick Lancaster and Angelo Giuliano

All right, Alexander, we are here with Angelo Giuliano and Patrick Lancaster, and they are joining us from two different locations. They're close to each other, but they are in two different locations. So we are going to talk about Venezuela. And before we get started, Angelo and Patrick, where can people follow your work? So my work is Angelo in China on Twitter, and I have a small YouTube channel, Angelo Giuliano. You can check over there. Link is in the description box down below. Patrick.

Yeah, well, first off, thanks for having me, guys. Again, great to see everyone. And, yeah, as normal, I'm all over social media, but the main meat of my work and journalism is on YouTube and supported by Substack. So if you guys want to see something, go there and you can see my work. I have all those links in the description box down below and I will have them as a pinned comment as well. Highly recommended to follow both Angelo and Patrick's work. So Alexander, let's start things off and discuss Venezuela. Indeed, let's indeed discuss it, Venezuela because we are extremely fortunate and very privileged

because we have two very, very insightful and acute observers to help us understand the institution. Angelo Giuliano is in Venezuela. He's in Caracas, in the... the capital of Venezuela. And he's been there for, I think, some time, a couple of weeks. And so he has a good feel of the situation there. And Patrick is on the border. And there's lots of tense things happening on the border. And we have a situation where, for the first time that I can ever remember, the United States is in conflict with Venezuela, but with Colombia as well, with the President of Colombia, the government of Colombia, very, very unhappy about the actions that the United States is taking against Venezuela

and the government of Colombia in effect receiving challenges and threats from the United States as well. By the way, and we won't discuss this much in today's program, but Brazil is now increasingly starting to speak out against what is happening in its region. and it's important to remember that and keep that at the back of one's mind because Brazil is, of course, a brick state. It's also potentially a great power, a future great power, and it is the giant of Latin America. But let's start with this crisis. It's been escalating. We now have more seizures by the United States of oil tankers. The United States has dropped the pretense that this is all about drug smuggling. We're no longer having attacks just on speedboats.

We're now having actual seizures of oil tankers. The President of the United States has demanded that Venezuela give up its entire energy industries and all kinds of other things. So it's becoming clearly an attack on the Venezuelan system as it exists today. And the President of the United States has also referred to the Venezuelan government. as illegitimate. There has been much talk about the situation in Venezuela, within Venezuela, how stable it is, whether the government in Venezuela is in control. Angelo, you are in Caracas. What does the situation look like there? Is it peaceful? Is the situation,

does it suggest, did you get the sense that things are slipping out of the government's control? What is your sense of the situation in Caracas now? Well, right now in Caracas, this is Christmas holiday, so it's family time, people enjoy. There's absolutely no feeling. There's absolutely no tension. Even talking to people, war is not the topic of the day. The main topic of the day, and this is like every day, it's inflation. Inflation is a big topic, how you can convert to Bolivaris into U.S. dollar, so you can have a hedge against the inflation.

Other than that, if one can feel the tension, there are two places. It's close to the presidential palace. Of course, there's a very heavy military presence over there. You cannot approach that area. And also immigration. You go through very tense time in the immigration, so it's one hour interview in my case, and ultimately I made it.

But in the case of Patrick, Patrick couldn't make it. even though he has also Russian passport, so Russians do not need a visa to get into Venezuela. So here, I would say, when I look at, I've been here coming here for many, many, many years, but I've never seen Venezuela as peaceful as now. It's very surprising. You see, Venezuela has been going through very tense moments. There was a coup in 2002, but there was also 2014, the Guarimbabas, the Guarimbas, where those, those riots, big riots,

that actually, you know, it was very bad for the economy. It was, of course, financed by all those NGOs, NED, a lot of things that are happening here, including, you know, all the damages on the economy, sabotage and so on, are all done by a fifth column and also with the help of the CIA and NED. And I have a story. I've met one of those guys, Italian citizen. Then I hand over to Patrick,

But the story, I call him Carlos. Carlos, that's his name, you know, but basically he's Italian citizen. And he told me that he's working in humanitarian work. But then I found out that he has a military background. Then I find out that he does security analysis. And then he tells me I used to be funded by USAID, he told me. But they cut the funding. And whose funding now is the EU?

He's not allowed because of the new national security law here is not allowed to operate. They shut down lots of NGOs, but he's still here in Venezuela under tourist visa. So that gives you an idea of all those covert agents that are working on the background. And I think they're trying to see if there is an escalation, this fifth column could start doing some actions, covert actions and sabotage. Before we go to Patrick, can I just ask you a further question, which is about understanding the political geography of Venezuela? Am I right in believing?

This is my impression, that it is in Caracas, that the center of the political opposition to the government is located, that the main political stronghold of, the opposition is located in Caracas itself. Is that correct? Yes, absolutely. More specifically in some very wealthy area, actually one of the areas where I'm right now is Altamira El Chakao.

And you see this middle high class extremely wealthy, wealthy people. Because you see it's people, they tend to see it's a socialist country. You know, the government has been doing lots of concessions with this middle class. those old families that are extremely rich here. And they have a, actually some, they can manage to do extremely well, even under sanctions, if not even better. So that opposition is based here. And I came across some people, you know, that they know personally Corinna Machado.

She hangs around those, she used to hang around in those, you know, elites restaurants, extremely expensive restaurants here in Caracas. So, Patrick, you're on the border. and we've been hearing lots of things about the border. And of course, the border between Venezuela and Colombia has often been very tense. There was a time when there was the FARC insurgency in Colombia, which went on for a long time.

And Venezuela under Chavez had some role in that, though Chavez, it's also fair to say, played a big role in brokering the end of that conflict. How is the situation on the border now? Is the tension, is the fighting, You see armed men, is the situation becoming particularly tense? What is going on on the border at this time? Well, that's a really good question, because coming here,

I wasn't so much prepared to be engulfed in the border story here as much as I was. I assumed I was going straight through to Caracas, but that's a whole different story. But the fact is, I'm here on the ground. And I was very surprised to find that, yes, here on the border, it is really a tense situation. And in fact, just last week, one of the armed groups, the ELN announced strike or attacks on the government. And just an hour from where I am. Sorry, before you, which government, the Colombian government or the Venezuelan. The Colombian government.

Right. And can you explain to us who they are? Who are the ELN? The ELN is one of the major armed groups that is part of the internal war or fighting that's been going on for many decades since people say different things. Some say the 60s. Some say the 40s. But the fact is there has been fighting going on for. generations here in Colombia. And in fact, what was very surprising for me was that how much of

Colombia actually is controlled by these armed groups. I mean, we're talking close to 50% controlled by these armed groups, our anti-government groups, our factions, because the geography separates Columbia so much because the mountain ranges come in and then split off. And it's really like the locals have described it as being several different countries. And some obviously say different things. I say, okay, well, who supports these armed groups? And a lot will say, nobody supports them. But, you know, it's kind of the normal situation when you have areas that break or attempts to break away from countries.

You know, sometimes the people that live in these areas will support these. I'm actually actively trying to get closer to these areas. It's a little bit difficult because, as I said, I hadn't expected to be here, so I didn't have the infrastructure and network set up before I came to get into this. But every day I'm going out talking to the people about what they think, about the situation with United States threatening the, the governments and presidents of Colombia about being next. And I'm actually releasing a report on that,

as well as a report on investigating the internal or civilian civil war, which they don't declare it as a civil war, even though it's a war that have been going on internally in the country for generations. But, you know, it is what it is. So bottom line, here on the border, the locals describe this border area and, you know, we can assume it's factual, that this is the hub, or one of the hubs of the illegal trafficking of, of course, drugs, human trafficking, and much more. and as far as the attacks on possible future attacks on Venezuela, the local population is very concerned here what the impact is going to be to the border regions

because then themselves, several people have described this area as we're not really part of Colombia, we're not part of Venezuela, we're the frontier, we're the frontier area, and what affects one side affects the other, and they're affected by everything here in the middle. And, you know, it's definitely an interesting, place to be. As soon as I came off the bus here, I realized this is a whole different atmosphere to be in. In the first several days, I was staying right on the border. So honestly, I wouldn't recommend it as a

family vacation spot right on the border. Maybe in the city itself of Kakuta, not so bad. But the border very frontier quite interesting and somewhere you want to be very careful. But now I'm closer to the center and I've been talking to people about what they think about the situation in the center, what they think about the U.S. involvement and threats to the region. And they themselves say that it's an aim by, as we know, the U.S. to destabilize, the area for the purpose of getting resources. And I got to give it to Trump. You know, he came out finally and said, yeah, it's for the oil.

It's for the resources. Instead of just going off of this, you know, bull comments of the war on drugs. Okay, yeah, there's something to that there. But I was involved in the invasion of Iraq when on the way there, they were telling us the weapons of mass destruction, and we're going to save the world and all this stuff. And it was just bull. And, you know, that's why I came here to this region

because I saw the U.S. coming into a conflict under, you know, the false intentions, basically. And I didn't want to see that happen again. And if it did, I wanted to be here to show the world what I could, give a little bit of different angles. But I've got to give it to Angelo. He's there on the ground right now in Caracas. He's seeing what the real situation is. So I definitely recommend for everyone to go check out his YouTube channel. He's got a lot of great content coming out there. So you definitely got to go check out his YouTube channel for sure.

We'll come to Angela. There's a few questions I wanted to ask you. Patrick. First of all, can you just describe the landscape? Now, we're hearing lots of stories about this is a heavy jungle landscape. But, of course, you know, this is all something that, you know, people talk about in the media very often. And I don't even understand sometimes what jungle actually means. Is this tropical rainforest? Is it the Andes? Is this what makes these regions inaccessible?

I'm not in any way suggesting, by the way, that you try this. But does this mean that, for example, there is no real control over the border, and that if you're an armed group, you can cross in one part of the border from one side of the border to the other without any difficulty in some places. Is this the situation that we are looking at in the border?

In other words, is this what you might describe as natural guerrilla country? Just asking. Well, I took a bus from Bogota to Kakuta, It was a 21-hour bus, and I got to see what the real land situation is. And if you look at it on the map, you see the Andes Mountains coming into the country and branching off. And that's, as I said, is what separates the country into these different areas. And I mean, even if you're not going, as the bird flies very far, just because of the way the geography is set up to get from one point to another, you go through this windy turn.

I mean, I got to say, it was the worst bus ride I've had probably in my life. Several people on the bus got sick just because of the windy roads. But as far as the border, yeah, I mean, it's just unfathomable how much of the country is actually not controlled by the government. And, I mean, I myself had talked to people about how I was having issues getting across to Venezuela. And let me make just a side comment. I came here to cross into Venezuela after speaking to the Ministry of International Communications of Venezuela every day for a week and was told my name would be on the border and there would be no issues. But when I got here, things basically turned around, even though I don't need a visa to enter, I don't want to go too much into it, but there was definitely some people that dropped the balls on that side of the border. So that's why I'm here.

But back to what I was saying, as talking to people about my situation, trying to find different contacts in different ways to communicate with the government to get across, I was actually offered to be smuggled across. I was told it's no problem to get people across the border illegally. And, you know, I thought about it, but, you know, I had to decide probably not a good, idea, but boy, for the story, it would have been a great story. But that's the situation on the border from what the people tell me. Again, not my words, but I was offered that option. And as I understand, there is a huge amount of the border that is not controlled, but is controlled

by these illegal armed groups, guerrilla groups, however you want to call it. that say the locals tell me like the ELN, they had some ideas of their mission back in the 60s that have changed so much and warped so much to go towards the drug trade now. And the massive amounts of drugs that have been coming in to these armed groups is what's changing their ideology. And at least here in Kukuta, I haven't found one person that is on the side of these illegal groups. groups. Now, I have found people here, some not so much for the presidential administration here in Colombia, but more the majority for them. And so it's really kind of a mixing pot here in Kakuta, both left and right and pro-government against government, and the same as the Venezuela government.

Yeah. So let's let's go back to Angela. So the government in Venezuela appears to be in fairly secure, firm control of Caracas at the moment. There's no visible signs of protest. There's no demonstrations that the army seems to be, I'm moving a bit forward, but there doesn't, there's no obvious sign of dissension from the army. What about the rest of the country? Is the government in Venezuela in control of the country? the rest of the country, in Colombia, it doesn't seem as if the government is. But what is the situation in Venezuela? Are you able to travel around the country? Are you able to go to the villages and to the communities there? What is their perspective on this crisis? Do they support or do they oppose the government? And if there is an American invasion, which God help us, let's hope there isn't,

what would their response be? I would say when you look at the whole society, it's extremely polarized. But we need to also challenge this polarization. Is it an organic one? What's the reason? So you see, when you have a massing funding that is coming from outside, that actually changed the whole political landscape. So I would say there's an unorganic, which comes from different ways, you know,

because sovereignty has different dimensions. And the information space is extremely important, including social media. And you have also this now, these seven million Venezuelans that left, that actually the West is working closely with them just to create this opposition or maybe this fifth column. So I would say 40%, but out of those 40%, of course, there's a very large majority, which is Venezuela first,

meaning that they do not want to go along what Karina-Mash-a-Mash-Mash-a-Mach. Chado wants to do because she wants clearly to sell off completely Venezuela, all the assets, all the resources. So it is polarized, but nothing close to what it was before. There's a uniting effect. And I think this is probably the reason that Trump is not going ahead with this plan. For the time being, you see, there's a dynamic. They need to have a momentum. The momentum, could have a momentum if you have different factors. One is the popular support in the US. I would say also there's a problem of legality,

international legality. And so they need to have certain elements within Venezuela that are prepared for those covert operation, for this hybrid warfare. And it seems that there's not the momentum right now. And I would say what we need to pay attention clearly is a false flag attack. Because that's what the U.S. right now needs a casus belly.

If there is no casaspelli, then Trump cannot go ahead. I have great doubts that they go ahead. Yeah. Does the Venezuelan government have actual control of the countryside in a way that Colombia does not? I mean, this is... Absolutely, absolutely. Historically, I would say,

there are few borders, but this is more like in the Amazon. The Amazon is much more difficult. There's not a tight control. And you need to keep in mind that Venezuela is a massive, massive country. But it's nothing even, I mean, nothing close to what Venezuela is, Colombia is. This has been historical. I used to go very often to Cucuta to those places. And actually, interesting stories that when I spent a year in 99 in Venezuela.

And we used to have lots of Colombians refugees. And Colombia was extremely dangerous because there was lots of kidnapping. It was very difficult to travel around Colombia. So now it is exactly the opposite. You have refugees, Venezuelan refugees in Colombia because of the situation. So I would say when it comes to the control of the country, there's a strong control of the country. I would say, yeah. Go on, go on.

Another thing is that what happened, I remember back in 99, you have some dissent on the regional level. For example, when I was in Merida, you have the governor that didn't want to recognize Chavez back then. So you had a game within Venezuela of regions that, you know, like governors that were, you know, going against challenging Chavez. But since then, Chavez has done a lot of things, including. issuing national security laws that prevented this Western meddling. Tell us about the economic situation. You mentioned that the inflation is very high. I mean, what is the economic situation like?

I got the impression that things became absolutely catastrophic a few years ago, and then there was a significant stabilization. What is the economic situation like today? Is it getting worse again? I would say there was a 2014-15 because of the Guarimba, the riots. This was very damaging the economy. And there was a lot of sabotage. There was sabotage of the refineries.

You see, one of the main problems here in Venezuela is that a lot of the oil that is produced in Venezuela is not refining Venezuela. So they do not control that. And they are dependent on the US when it comes to maintenance, investment, and also refining product. So this is a very old colonial-style economy still, but they've been doing a lot of new steps. Very similar. They copied a lot of what Iran did, was working towards self-sufficiency. So now, if you really analyze, the self-sufficiency of Venezuela has got much, much, much better. Agriculture, I mean, pharmaceutical, and I would say one of the main problem right now is mainly refinery.

refining their product. And Iran is helping a lot. China is helping a lot. And once it got like this sorted out, then they won't have any more power cut, which is very damaging the economy. If you are not self-sufficient when it comes to energy,

you know, the whole economy can be put at a stop. So you have much less power cut. that they used to have. Now, I'm going to ask you a question, which I think I have to ask. What about the situation with the illegal drug strain? Is President Maduro the head of a drug's cartel? Is it a drugs cartel that runs Venezuela? I ask this because, I mean, this narrative is all over the place. And if you go to certain sections of the American media, it is all repeated there, by the way. Yeah, well, Alexander, I have a rule. Most of what I do is,

I use Western data as Western papers just because I don't want to be labeled pro-Russian or pro-Maduro. You just need to take the 2024 DEA report, and you go through that report. Venezuela is not mentioned at all. That's a pure invention, really. I would say, of course, there are these activities on the border. I know for sure in Kukuta. There's a trade between Kukuta and Merida. But there's a, you know, it's probably most of it is for local consumption.

Yeah. In Venezuela, it's very common that people take cocaine as, you know, but, but, I mean, probably the same as in the West, but the price is way, way lower. But I would say it's impossible. But look at the geography. You shipping with boats, you know, those boats all the way to the U.S. It's not possible, you know, it doesn't make any sense. I would say this probably, but it must be extremely marginal.

And if the DEA report doesn't mention it back in 2024, well, I mean, it's not, you don't build this trade within one year. It's just, you know, it is. So, well, this is not, it's not a surprise that Trump has shifted this narrative. And now he's being very honest about it. It's, we hear about the oil. And probably they're going back to the expropriation, not expropriation, There was nationalization back when Chavez came into power, and basically they, you know, they had to manage this nationalization.

And probably, you know, those U.S. corporation, they lost out of it. And they want to have that grab on those resources again. But, you know, I would say what Trump wants is not a win-win. He's going for the full grab. You know, if that was to happen, you can imagine it would be like black rock, all those vultures that would come in and take everything, and nothing would be left for the people of Venezuela. Patrick, if I can go back to you, I mean, what you're describing seems to be territory, which is extremely difficult to control altogether. And the Colombian government has been fighting wars to try to gain control of Venezuela for decades. I should tell you, by the way, just in Parsi, that I'm very familiar with Colombian history,

much more so than with Venezuelan, by the way, for reasons I'm not going to explore here. But I know all about the long wars in Colombia. So the Colombian government, with the help of the United States, has been trying the decades, going certainly back to the 1940s and arguably long before, to try to gain control of the whole country, and it has never managed it. It doesn't look as if this isn't part of the world that is easy to control at all. If there is a crisis, if the United States gets sucked in, are they going to be able to control it? I mean, we're talking about the border regions, but if there is a collapse of authority in Caracas,

if the government there is destabilized and there's a crash, then presumably this spreads. you've seen conflict in more places than I can imagine. You've seen armed men. You've seen men with guns. How proficient are these men that you see in the places where you are, in the place where you are now? How proficient are they with guns? Is this an area which the United States could easily take control of? Well, yeah, it's...

I would have to say, where I am, now I haven't been able to see much of the actual fighters on either side yet. I'm working my way, hopefully, to get closer to the border, which is, as I said, just an hour away, not the border, but the border of the uncontrolled disputed territory. And as far as will the United States be able to calm things down or control this area if they needed to control it? Well, let's look at, you know, a flat desert. Were they able to control it when they had a resistance?

No. So with the intense forests, jungles, and mountain ranges, and just so many different factions. I mean, there's just many, many different levels of factions that, I'm told by the locals, many of them do cooperate directly with the parts of the army that are corrupted. There is interaction in support going both ways. And what I'm told, Petrov, the president's administration of Colombia, is trying, what the locals tell me, he is trying to take down the corruption and clean things up. And he's been trying to do it his whole term. He's in already three years, and he's got one more a year left, or just under a year, I guess.

the election, I believe, is early summer of next year. So I'm getting more and more interested in Colombia, so I might come back for that. We'll have to see how things goes. But as I said, I was not prepared to be reporting on Colombia at all. But it's interesting so far. I'm doing what I can here. I've got another five, six days in the theater.

And I'm already, I'm already. I mean, at the assumption that this isn't going to work, the government, the ministry in Caracas was not able to fix whatever problems they had in their organization. So I'm pretty much buckled down here on the Columbia side. Tomorrow I'm going to be trying to move forward out of the city. But as I said, I didn't have the network set up. So it's pretty difficult, actually, to get everything into place, especially being here. on my own. If I was here with two people, it'd be one thing, but I've got to take care of my safety as well. So I'm going to be trying to move forward towards the conflict itself, the internal conflict,

and seeing what information I can find out on the ground. And yeah. Do you think Trump and the United States have any idea of the scale what we're talking about? Angela just spoke about. the immensity of Venezuela. You only have to look at the map to see how big it is. Colombia, by the way, is a big, very big country too. We're talking about very, very large populations. If Venezuela is anything like Colombia, then people do know how to use weapons and have them. And I'm sure they do in Venezuela too, even though apparently the government has controlled there. So, I mean, this is not at all a place in which one should walk into lightly. I'm using careful word, careful language here. I mean, do you think the Americans,

do you think the United States really understands this? I mean, there have been Americans, as Angela was saying on the ground, in Venezuela for ages and in Colombia too. But does the messaging get through to Washington, to the policy, to the political decision make? Is that? Well, I would say, yeah, there's two different parts to that question. One is, does Trump realize it? And one does the United States intelligence realize it? I think in general, those are two very, very separate things. Yeah, of course, I would think the U.S. intelligence, even with the many faults they have,

they have a pretty good idea. The troubles are going to be up against. Trump, on the other hand, you know, he's just been kind of floating around with threats and comments. So yeah, but one thing I'd be interesting to ask Angelo is about the nationalization of the oil rights and oil refineries and infrastructure of Venezuela in 2007, which is why Trump says Venezuela stole the oil from the United States. I would like to see his comments on the ground there in Caracas, what he thinks about the situation.

Whenever you're ready. I don't want to jump in too much, but... Well, I don't know exactly the date, but it was much earlier the nationalization. I think this is not the first time Iran did it too, and I think it's a matter of conversation. I don't have the details, really. This is, it must be very specific. But ultimately, you need to keep in mind that Chevron still now is buying from Venezuela. That means that Venezuela managed to keep a good relationship and probably Chevron is getting a good deal out of this.

The problem is that the reserve, you need to keep in mind, the reserves that Venezuela has is massive. And you have also a network, a very large network of refineries in the US that are made on purpose for this specific oil, which is very heavy oil. So you need to keep them working. So there's a pressure from the US to have this oil coming from Venezuela. So you see, I would say, I mean, the answer is right there. You see, it's just the fact that Venezuela is still doing business with Chevron in itself. It tells you that Maduro is extremely flexible. He's not going to say, well, I'm going all in with the Chinese or the Russians or the Iranians.

There's flexibility out there. But what Trump wants is just. just way too much. It is about a complete surrender of Venezuela sovereignty. So this is unacceptable. So, yeah, that's pretty much. And again, the project is very open out there. It's a socialist project. It's a government that ultimately Venezuelans have chosen. But I would say, I'm not too much versed into ideology here, but I would say there's a risk here for the U.S. the same as Cuba.

They could not allow Cuba a socialist experiment to be successful, just so close to the U.S., the same as it comes when it comes to Venezuela. Imagine Venezuela being, you know, extremely successful. That would damage the image of the U.S. I put just on Twitter video of downtown Caracas, and I'm talking about really like average places. Even the barriers in Caracas that are supposed to be poor and dangerous,

they look far, far better than lots of areas in Philadelphia or San Francisco. And I have to say, I don't see extreme poverty. Yes, there is poverty, but there is no extreme poverty. And just going back, we're talking about economy too. Of course, there is inflation. But we need to differentiate. because the fact of the economy is dollarized here, they use double system, Bolivar's and dollars,

but usually what people do is they transfer directly into dollar. So ultimately we need to look at the purchasing power, the disposable income purchasing power. That I've been, I have had like very detailed talks with people saying, well, now compare what you were making five years ago and how much you could put on the table, how does it work? And they say my life is overall a little bit better.

It's just that double standard of bolivorous US dollar is a stress because people are constantly changing their bolivores into US dollar. And the best thing is, of course, if they have access to physical gold, that would be even better. Yeah. Can I actually ask, because it's interesting, you brought this up, I was actually going to ask you about the Cubans because there's something else which appears very regularly in the media

in the West, which is that the Cubans basically run Venezuela, that Maduro's government is basically run by Cubans and that the Cubans maintain a big intelligence presence in Venezuela. I can find you, provide you with lots of articles in Britain. And by the way, some of the US, where they save a safe, is there is truth to them? Well, there's been historically a very strong cooperation between both. Economically, you see, Venezuela sells very cheap gasoline to Cuba. This has been also a deal that Cuba would provide lots of medical doctors. You know, the level of medicine they have in Cuba is just amazing. So there's been lots of very close cooperation, including Dimitri. So yes, there's a corporation. But it's not like what I've

heard, like Praetorian Guards. You know, they say that, Maduro has a pejorian guards that he actually has the right to kill him if they want. This is just absurd. I would say, yes, there's cooperation. It's been there forever since Chavez, but it's not, you couldn't tell it's there's a control, really. Absolutely not. But I would say there's a cooperation. You know, Venezuela is taking a very pragmatic approach.

They're not going all in with China and Russia. They've been trying just to be really very measured. they don't want to cite completely because they do know that if you go all in, if you have, let's say, if you have a U.S. Russian Army base in Venezuela, that would be just a red line. They've been extremely careful. And they say when it comes to all South America, including Petro and Lula, you see, they're criticizing what the U.S. is doing, but they're not going all in. And they even played the game of the U.S. See, when Maduro was elected, they actually didn't accept the election. of Madura, but this was just being, you know,

just giving a favor to the US. And this is something which is very embarrassing for the, I would say, for this bricks thing. You know, it's a Lula gave a veto to Venezuela for Venezuela just to get into bricks. So you see, they're playing a very fine line. They're trying to still please the US. But what they don't realize is that I think

that this Monroe Doctrine 2 is going to be, on a complete power grab. Not only Nicaragua, you know, there's going to be, they want a domino effect. It's Nicaragua, Cuba, then probably Colombia, but they'll go all in because it is about full control. That's my impression. And a lot of people, I was also in Brazil just before,

but a lot of people agree with that. They're very aware of what they've been true. You know, there was a lot of, I mean, US completely, US control government, dictatorship, put in place. They know what it means to be in control. They know what it means to be a sovereign state and to fight for your self-determination. But here I see a trend that is very worrying for the whole region. And they are aware that if Venezuela fall, this is going to be a domino effect all the way. Yeah. So, Angela, this is a huge topic, which we do need to come back to, which we probably

will, all four of us like. Well, there's one very, very, very last question I want to ask. Again, lots of rumours in the media, particularly, I have to say now, independent or alternate media, that the Russians are in Venezuela. Now, if they were there, I'm sure you wouldn't see them. But have you heard any rumors to that effect? I mean, is there any stories of Russians or Wagner people, you know, appearing in places? I mean, Russian transport planes, you know, coming with weapons, any, anything of that kind. I mean, it's true that Putin and Maduro has spoken quite a lot recently, but the Russians deny that this is happening.

What is your sense about it? I can only speculate here. What is surprising is that I have the impression that absolutely everybody is here, everybody doing business. You see, we don't mention this, but the Turks are very massively invested here. But there are people from Azerbaijan. There's so many people foreigners here doing business because there's a, you know, they see a potential. There are lots of things to be done.

But everybody is here. And I've seen for the first time many Iranians too, just you, that I wouldn't see before. Even five years ago, I wouldn't see. But now they're here present and doing business, but all kinds of businesses. You know, the Turks have a chain like kind of small shopping mall chains, you know, but very active here. So, but when it comes to the weapons, you know, that type of cooperation, it is hard. You know, I don't know how those people could get the information here on the ground. You are tightly controlled.

You know, you, I mean, this is especially now, there's high tension. There's only so much you can get in terms of information and filming. So I would say when it comes to that corporation, we can. We can only speculate. But I would say now on the strategic side, well, they have to. Russia and China has to, they have to offer all they can to Venezuela, especially since they don't have power projections to help Venezuela at least give us support in terms of intelligence and weapons because indirectly this is going to harm China.

You see, whenever, I would say that everything is leading to China when you see those conflict. When you see Iran, Iran is a big supply of oil to China, Venezuela too, the largest importer of Venezuelan oil is China. So indirectly, Trump is trying to hit two birds at the same. Actually, not two birds, many birds at the same time. When hitting Venezuela, is hitting Cuba. Actually, Cuba could fall even before Venezuela because Cuba is leaving on the gasoline coming from Venezuela. So I would say Cuba could be a target. But at the same time, it is harming breaks. It's harming Russia and China.

And what Trump knows is that there's only one country in the world that has power projection. It's the U.S. No matter how strong is China and Russia, they don't have those 800 army bases that the U.S. have. And I want to add one more thing is that what Trump is doing right now with Venezuela, my impression is that this could be a test. because when you look at the long-term plan, when it comes to China, the strategy will be on the early phases to do blockades. So blockades when it comes to China, I would say one of the choke points would be the Malacca Strait. But you see, you do a test on Venezuela, but this could be applied also in those choke points.

These are very, very important points. Gentlemen, we're going to have to finish there, but we've discussed many very important things. thank you both thank you Angela for being in Caracas and giving us an update of the situation Patrick thank you for your very very interesting update I'm going to say I know you don't need this advice

but please be careful I mean this is clearly a complicated part of the world my wife would say I need that advice every day I know you do I know I know you do but I can sometimes occasionally add to it

and of course I mean at the same time We're very grateful, but do be careful. And thank you again. Thank you again, Jen. Before we sign off, Patrick, where can people follow your work? Again, the majority of my work goes to my YouTube channel, Patrick Lancaster News Today, and also my substack for additional videos and tax.

I do deep dives on all my reports as far as text goes. So those two, you've got to follow. Of course, I have Twitter, but it's, you know, secondary. and whatnot. But definitely follow Angelo's, subscribe to Angelo's YouTube channel. If you want to get straight from Caracas right now, it's the channel to follow. And again, it was great being on with everybody. Really great to see everybody and hope not long next time. Angelo, Patrick gave you a good plug. Anything you want to add? Well, Twitter, Angelou in China. And then I have to say.

have a YouTube channel, Angelo Giuliano. And I would say I returned the thing to Patrick. But, you know, it's a different reason. You know, these days I just realize that Patrick is going, the type of risk is taking that he wanted me to go to Coquota and just realized that, you know, it's just, it's important to support this independent journalist. It's tough.

It's tough, you know, so especially people that are putting the life at risk, you know, it's so, yeah, support Patrick too. Patrick, Angelo. Thank you so much. for joining us. Take care.