 Over the past few days, details have emerged of multiple attempts to target the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and its legitimate government headed by President Nicolás Maduro. Let us see what happened and who was responsible. On the early morning of Sunday, May 3rd, speedboats left the Colombian coast and headed towards Venezuela. The boats that landed on the Venezuelan coastline at La Guaira had no authorization to cross the maritime border. This was clearly a hostile action since the boats carried heavy weaponry including assault rifles and ammunition. The people on the boats possessed satellite phones as well as uniforms and helmets with a flag of the United States. The incursion was intercepted by the National Bolivarian Armed Forces and the National Bolivarian Police who fought them off. Eight of the belligerents were killed while two were intercepted. Similarly on Monday, May 4th, Venezuelan security forces aided by the Bolivarian Militia in the 12th town of the Aragua state arrested eight mercenaries who were on a speedboat. Two more were captured later in Puerto Maya. Among the terrorists captured were two former US soldiers from Texas who are currently working as mercenaries and are employed by the company Silvercorp. The mercenaries were part of Operation Gideon which is an operation organized, planned and financed by the Venezuelan opposition and its allies. As the river all, the Minister of Internal Affairs of Venezuela addressed the media and said that the government had received information about the attack from sources in Columbia and from its own regular patrols of the Venezuelan coastline. In a press conference on Wednesday, President Nicolas Maduro announced that four more terrorists had been arrested by authorities. He condemned the involvement of Ivan Duque's government of Columbia in Operation Gideon and highlighted that Venezuela had repeatedly denounced the existence of paramilitary training camps in Columbia since the failed attempt to assassinate Maduro in October 2018. However, the Colombian government had ignored all warnings. Maduro also announced that he would seek the extradition of US mercenary and the mastermind behind the operation, Jordan Godru. He also released a clip of an interview with one of the US mercenaries who was arrested. This mercenary spoke about the operation and the prior planning done with Godru. What was the job proposal for Jordan to meet Venezuelans in Columbia, train them and come with them to Venezuela to secure Caracas and secure an airport here for follow-on? When did Jordan contact you for the job? Jordan contacted me for the job in early December, but he didn't give me a lot of details about exactly what it was. When did you fly from US to Colombia in January on the 16th? Who accompanied you, Jordan, Alex and Aaron? Jordan Godru recently made headlines when the details of a plot for a small invasion in 2019 were published in AP. He was a US Army Special Operative and now is a private security contractor who founded Silver Corp. He worked with Cliver Alcala, a former Venezuelan military officer who brought together a few hundred Venezuelan military deserters to conduct the raid. Alcala is now in prison in the United States for his involvement in the drug trade. Godru and Alcala were allegedly backed by Trump's bodyguard Keith Schiller and Rowan Kraft of Kraft Foods. It is likely that the recent invasion in May 2020 emerged out of the military deserter camp set up by Alcala in Colombia. One of the men involved in the raid was Captain Robert Colina, also known as Pantera. Colina had been involved in the attempted coup on behalf of Juan Guaido on April 30, 2019 and is a close associate of Alcaraz. This is not the first time an attack on this sort has happened in Venezuela. The US government has time and again tried to overthrow Nicolas Maduro and his government and to reverse the Bolivarian Revolution. In August 2017, US President Donald Trump spoke openly about the military option available for Venezuela at the time of the formation of the Lima Group. We have many options for Venezuela and by the way, I'm not going to rule out a military option. We have many options for Venezuela. This is our neighbor, this is, you know, we're all over the world and we have troops all over the world in places that are very, very far away. Venezuela is not very far away and the people are suffering and they're dying. We have many options for Venezuela, including a possible military option if necessary. In January 2019, the US government deepened its hybrid war. It declared that Juan Guaido, an insignificant politician, was the president of Venezuela and turned over substantial Venezuelan assets outside the country to him. In May 2019, Senator Lindsey Graham wrote that the US must be willing to intervene in Venezuela the way we did in Granada. In 1983, US Marines landed in Granada to overthrow the legitimate government and uproot the new Juel movement. Beyond the military sphere, the US government has increased pressure across the board on the Venezuelan government amid the COVID-19 outbreak. In February 2020, at the Munich Security Conference, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the US seeks to oust Maduro. In March, the US tightened sanctions against Venezuela. It also put pressure on the International Monetary Fund to prevent Venezuela from accessing emergency finances to tackle the global pandemic. The Venezuelan government in turn mobilized the people to break the chain of infection with international assistance from China, Cuba and Russia as well as the World Health Organization. By late March, the intensity of US efforts increased. The US Department of Justice claimed that President Maduro and the top leadership of the country was involved in narco-trafficking and put bounties on their heads. No evidence was offered for this claim. Trump authorized the naval detachment to be deployed off the coast of Venezuela, threatening its government and intimidating its population. On April 30th, to increase the pressure on Venezuela, the Trump administration activated parts of the selected reserve forces to assist the US armed forces. This was for a mission named Enhanced Department of Defense Counter-Narcotic Operation in the Western Hemisphere. Vladimir Padrino Lopez, the Ministry of Defense for Venezuela, said that the government and the people defeated its attacks and would remain vigilant against other such plots.