Faced with attacks by the United States on Venezuela, the Minister of Health, Alexandre Padilha, stated that he had prepared the Brazilian Unified Health System (SUS) to receive the impacts that the conflict in the neighboring country will result. In a message on a social network, he wrote that Brazil will take care of “whoever needs to be taken care of, on Brazilian soil”.
Padilha was the first member of the top echelon of the Brazilian government to speak out about An emergency meeting was called this Saturday morning to discuss the attack and capture of President Nicolás Maduro. According to Itamaraty interlocutors, the priority at this time is to gather detailed information about the operation before any public statement.
“Since the beginning of military operations around the neighboring country, we have prepared our SUS Agency, the SUS National Force and our Indigenous Health teams to reduce, as much as possible, the impacts of the conflict on health and the Brazilian SUS. Bring on PEACE! In the meantime, we will take care of those who need to be taken care of, on Brazilian soil”, says Padilha.
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As columnist Janaína Figueiredo, from GLOBO, showed, the Brazilian government had been considering the possibility of a United States attack on Venezuela for several weeks. This scenario even led President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to travel to Colombia between the Belém Leaders’ Summit and COP30 to participate in the meeting of heads of state and senior representatives of the countries that make up the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac), to defend that Latin America remains a zone of peace. This same concern led Lula to call Maduro in the first days of December.
The border between Brazil and Venezuela is just over 2 thousand kilometers long, divided between the states of Roraima (the main crossing is between Pacaraima-Santa Elena de Uairén) and Amazonas. Since the Venezuelan migration crisis began in 2013, the year in which Maduro was elected president for the first time — with accusations of fraud by the opposition —, the Observatory of the Venezuelan Diaspora estimates that 9.1 million people have left the country. According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, UNHCR, Venezuela currently has the largest number of refugees in the world (6.3 million), surpassing countries like Syria.
In recent months, Lula had been trying to act as a mediator in the escalating crisis between the US and Venezuela. In a conversation with journalists on December 18, the Brazilian president defended “dialogue” to avoid a “fratricidal war” in the region and said he would try to speak to Donald Trump about the matter before Christmas. However, there is no information that the conversation actually took place.
The attack on Venezuela was announced by Trump through a social network, in a message in which he said that American forces carried out a “large-scale attack” against the South American country and that more details will be presented at a press conference scheduled for 1 pm (Brasília time), in Mar-a-Lago, Florida. He did not say, however, where Maduro was taken or under what legal basis the capture took place.
Videos posted on social media show helicopters from the US Special Operations Forces flying over Caracas during the early hours of Saturday, while multiple explosions light up the sky over the Venezuelan capital. According to unconfirmed reports, the aircraft were CH-47G Chinook helicopters, designed for covert operations, and would have operated during attacks that, according to the Venezuelan government, hit the states of Miranda, Aragua and La Guaira, as well as Caracas.
At least seven explosions and noises similar to planes flying overhead were reported around 2 a.m. in Caracas. According to local sources heard by GLOBO, one of the targets would have been the La Carlota military base, of the Venezuelan Air Force, and Fort Tiuna.
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The explosions come after US President Donald Trump sent a fleet of warships to the Caribbean, mentioned the possibility of attacks on Venezuelan territory and stated that President Nicolás Maduro’s days in power were numbered.
The diplomatic crisis between the Americans and Venezuelans had been escalating in recent months. The Trump administration had already announced a “total and complete” naval blockade of sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela, intensifying pressure on Caracas by directly affecting oil, the country’s main revenue sector, and expanding the measures that Washington presents as part of a campaign against drug trafficking.
