Lawyers Armando de Mattos and Soraia Mendes discussed, this Wednesday (15), in The Great Debate (Monday to Friday, at 11pm), whether the reinforcement of the Brazilian Army on the border with Venezuela worsens the relationship between presidents Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) and Nicolás Maduro.
the Armed Forces plan their largest military exercise of 2025 near the Venezuelan border. One of the objectives is to train troops for a possible new escalation of tension with the Maduro regime.
Furthermore, after Maduro took office on January 10, .
Internally named “Operation Atlas”, the idea of the Armed Forces is that a large part of the armored and non-armored vehicle personnel, in addition to an estimated 8,000 officers, will be displaced from the first semester onwards.
For Mattos, the relationship between the two leaders ends up reaching an “impasse” with the addition of Army troops.
“It creates an impasse, of course, due to the concern we have when they closed the borders and now he, Nicolás Maduro, is worried about our troops there”, commented Mattos.
“It is clear that the closure of the Venezuelan border with our country has already turned on a yellow light”, he continued. “But we need to train our military for any type of intervention in that region, where we will have COP30, in Belém.”
For Mendes, the action could worsen the political relationship between the two leaders.
“It could get worse. This is a military exercise. The Armed Forces do this annually, it is not something that is happening because of the situation in Venezuela, but it is something that could get worse”, said Mendes. “Because Maduro will read this with his lens to enhance what he considers an external threat”, he added.
“[A relação entre] the Brazilian government and the government of Nicolás Maduro have been ‘sour’ for a long time. We recently had Maduro’s inauguration, President Lula did not attend. The person who represented our country was a diplomat, an ambassador to the country”, he concluded.
