SanctionsKill / Americas Without Sanctions, along with the National Network on Cuba, the Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition and the Venezuela Solidarity Network, issued the following statement on Sept. 12, 2025, to invite all people of conscience to share with their networks.
President Maduro in Caracas, Venezuela, Feb. 7, 2019.
We condemn the escalating U.S. attacks on Venezuela that have been ongoing since the Bolivarian Revolution began in 1998, including pressuring the country to bend to U.S. interests through the imposition of unilateral coercive measures (“sanctions”) since 2015.
These illegal measures are deliberately designed to cause inhumane suffering to destabilize the country and compel regime change. It has always been clear that the sanctions on Venezuela are a ploy to gain access to the country’s vast natural resources, including the world’s largest oil reserves.
While the coercive measures imposed on Venezuela “succeeded” in causing over 100,000 excess deaths, the imperial objective of regime change was thwarted by President Nicolás Maduro in concert with the people of the country and in firm alliance with their military.
President Trump has escalated the offensive by inventing the narco-terrorist myth, despite the fact that his own country is the world’s largest consumer of illicit drugs, biggest launderer of drug money and leading source of weaponry for the cartels.
Trump slapped a $50 million bounty on Maduro’s head, (unjustly) accusing him of directing the largely defunct Tren de Aragua gang and leading the fictitious “Cartel of the Suns,” only to justify sanctions, embargoes and threats of military intervention, according to Pino Arlacchi, former executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
U.S. aggression is now shifting towards direct armed intervention, with an armada of warships, F-35 stealth aircraft and thousands of troops confrontationally deployed to the southern Caribbean to increase pressure on Venezuela. The presence of so much U.S. military might close to a country the U.S. has (erroneously) labeled an “enemy” constitutes a powder keg that could be ignited at any moment under false pretenses.
We have already seen the premeditated murder by U.S. forces of the crew in a small boat off the coast of Venezuela and cannot rule out attempts to assassinate the country’s leaders, as the U.S. and its partner Israel have ghoulishly done in West Asia. We demand an end to this impunity!
A majority of regional governments and some 80 countries around the world have decried the U.S. military threats to Venezuela. Any injury to Venezuela will threaten the peace and stability of the entire region, particularly Cuba and Nicaragua, the other heavily sanctioned independent countries that are demonized by the U.S. administration.
We demand an end to U.S. hybrid warfare — the misinformation campaigns and sanctions imposed over the past two decades — and a stop to this armed aggression. Venezuela is a beacon of hope for the people of the Americas and the world. We demand that the Venezuelan people be allowed to live in peace according to the form of government they have chosen.
U.S. hands off Venezuela!
No coups! No sanctions! No wars!