Letter from Venezuelan president on U.S. aggression

December 27, 2025

The following is a letter from Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro to the Heads of State of the Latin American and Caribbean region, urging joint action against the aggressions, acts of piracy and extrajudicial killings perpetrated by the United States in the Caribbean Sea. These actions not only violate the Zone of Peace proclaimed in 2014 by the regional group CELAC, but also threaten trade and regional stability.

In his letter, President Maduro makes an urgent call to demand the immediate cessation of the military deployment, blockades and armed attacks. He also proposes activating the mechanisms of the multilateral system to investigate, sanction and prevent the recurrence of such acts. He further emphasizes the importance of defending the peace of Venezuela and the entire region, as well as safeguarding international law and the stability of the world and the global energy market.

Caracas, December 22, 2025

His Excellency President

Receive fraternal greetings from the people of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, a nation that today lives in peace, with institutional stability, sustained economic growth and a firm vocation for dialogue, cooperation and understanding between peoples, despite having been subjected for years to unilateral coercive measures and external pressures.

It is precisely because Venezuela is advancing, recovering and exercising its rights in a sovereign manner that I am writing to alert you to an escalation of extremely serious aggressions by the Government of the United States of America, whose effects transcend my country and threaten to destabilize the entire region and the international system as a whole.

On August 14, 2025, the United States ordered the largest naval and air deployment in the Caribbean Sea in recent decades, including a nuclear submarine, off the Venezuelan coast, under the supposed justification of an anti-drug operation called “Operation Southern Spear.”

This act constitutes a direct threat of the use of force, prohibited by Article 2, paragraph 4, of the Charter of the United Nations, and violates both the declaration of the Zone of Peace of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) in 2014 and the Treaty of Tlatelolco, which determines this region as free of nuclear weapons. Venezuela has not committed any act to justify this military intimidation.

Between September 2 and December 18, 2025, U.S. forces carried out 28 armed attacks against civilian vessels in the Caribbean Sea and the Eastern Pacific Ocean, leaving 104 people extrajudicially executed, many of them shipwrecked.

These acts directly and repeatedly violate: the right to life (article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights); the Geneva Conventions of 1949, which require the protection of civilians, wounded and shipwrecked at sea; and Additional Protocol I of 1977, which imposes an absolute distinction between the civilian population and combatants.

These are not isolated incidents but rather a systematic practice of lethal use of force outside any international legal framework and even the constitutional framework of the United States, where today an intense debate is taking place, both in its Congress and in public opinion, which overwhelmingly condemns such actions.

In December 2025, the United States kidnapped and robbed two ships on the high seas, containing approximately four million barrels of Venezuelan oil, and announced an absolute naval blockade against tankers carrying Venezuelan energy.

These actions constitute acts of piracy, understood in accordance with customary international law and practice codified by the United Nations, as illegal acts of violence, detention or predation committed on the high seas against ships and their cargo.

The main purpose of combating piracy is to protect the freedom of navigation and the inviolability of ships on the high seas, which makes it a universal principle, clearly violated in these illegal operations.

The fact that these acts are carried out by the armed forces of a State makes them even more serious, since they also constitute:

• Acts of aggression, in accordance with Resolution 3314 of the U.N. General Assembly.
• Violations of the 1958 Convention on the High Seas, ratified by the United States, which recognizes the exclusive jurisdiction of the flag State.
• Direct attacks against the safety of maritime navigation and international trade, prohibited by the Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Maritime Navigation.

The execution of State piracy is a direct threat to the international legal order and to global security.

Excellency, history has taught us that inaction in the face of aggression and disregard for international law has devastating consequences.

In the 1930s, the silence and passivity of the international community in the face of the rise of Nazism led to an unprecedented human tragedy: the Holocaust and a world war.

Today, regardless of historical differences, the logic is the same: If the unilateral use of force, the execution of civilians, piracy and the plunder of resources of sovereign States are tolerated, the world is heading towards a scenario of global confrontation of unpredictable proportions.

Venezuela reaffirms its vocation for peace, but it also declares with absolute clarity that it is prepared to defend its sovereignty, territorial integrity and resources, in accordance with international law.

However, we responsibly warn that these aggressions will not only impact Venezuela.

[Regarding] the blockade and piracy against Venezuelan energy trade:

• They will affect the supply of oil and energy.
• They will increase the instability of international markets.
• They will hit the economies of Latin America, the Caribbean and the world, especially the most vulnerable countries.

Energy cannot become a weapon of war or an instrument of political coercion.

For all of the above, I make this call to you in a respectful and responsible manner, focusing mainly on the fact that together:

3. 1. Let us explicitly condemn these acts of aggression, piracy and extrajudicial executions.

3. 2. Let us demand the immediate cessation of military deployment, blockade and armed attacks.

3. 3. Let us activate the mechanisms of the multilateral system to investigate, punish and prevent the repetition of these events.

To defend Venezuela today is to defend peace, international legality and the stability of the world.

Receive my highest consideration and esteem.

Nicolás Maduro Moros

President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela

Source: mazo4f.com/en/