Trump declares Venezuelan airspace will be ‘completely closed’

The President of the United States, Donald Trump, stated this Saturday that the airspace over and around Venezuela will be closed in its entirety. The announcement comes amid escalating tension with his Venezuelan counterpart, Nicolás Maduro, and two days after the American declared that efforts ‘by land’ against Venezuelan drug traffickers will begin soon. ‘To all airlines, pilots, drug traffickers, and people smugglers, please consider THE AIRSPACE OVER AND AROUND VENEZUELA COMPLETELY CLOSED,’ wrote the American president on his social media. On Friday, the New York Times revealed that Trump spoke with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro over the weekend, with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio also participating. The President of the United States addressed a possible meeting between the two, on American soil. Recent developments suggest exactly that: a few days after the conversation between the presidents, the State Department designated Maduro as the leader of the alleged Cartel de los Soles, referred to by the American government as a foreign terrorist organization. Additionally, a week ago, electromagnetic noises spread over the region, forcing commercial flights to divert and cancel routes over Venezuelan territory, according to a recent Bloomberg report. While it is impossible to identify the source of the interferences, ‘high levels of GPS interference are generally associated with military conflict zones,’ analyzed Dana Goward, president of the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation, a non-profit organization advocating the protection of critical infrastructures through the promotion of GPS signal security. The alert led to the suspension of flights to and from Venezuela by six carriers, which angered Caracas. Maduro accused the airlines of ‘joining the state terrorism actions promoted by the United States government by unilaterally suspending their commercial air operations’. There has been no official reaction from Caracas regarding Trump’s Saturday post.