Foreign Digest: Russia, Guyana and Venezuela

Russia: The Russian Federation jammed the navigation of the European Union President’s airplane over Bulgaria. The Russians increasingly jam the global positioning system (GPS) navigation of aircraft, ships and drones in Finland, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia since the full-scale Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2022. The navigation of an aircraft carrying the British Defense Secretary was jammed last year over Eastern Europe and the German Defense Secretary twice this year over the Baltics. Europeans near Russia have been forced to use backup systems to GPS. The jamming is part of Russia’s sabotage campaign that includes vandalism, arson and even attempted assassination. Russian tyrant Vladimir Putin, an ex-Soviet intelligence officer, is trying to restore the Soviet Union/Russian Empire. Guyana and Venezuela: Guyana is conducting its presidential and parliamentary elections today. Two major ethnic-based parties have traded power since independence from the United Kingdom in 1966 in the South American State, but a wealthy gold mine-owning upstart is a major challenger, despite being under United States sanctions for bribery. Control over Guyana’s relatively new oil major resources, which have recently fueled its world-leading economic growth, is at stake. Meanwhile, election commission officials came under fire from Venezuela in the territory the Socialist dictatorship of Venezuela claims. The Venezuelan claim is one of the major issues in the election campaign. As I mentioned in my last post, the United States has dispatched a naval flotilla to the southern Caribbean for anti-drug trafficking operations and also to deter Venezuelan aggression.