Cuba denounces US backed international plot to silence Venezuelan people

“We know well these interventionist practices,” the Cuban government said. The United States imposed a devastating economic embargo on the Caribbean island after its 1959 revolution that Havana says has cost it more than $100 billion.

“They think that they will manage to achieve the submission of the people to a puppet opposition that they financed,” it said. Cuba said only the Venezuelan people could decide how to overcome their problems and reiterated its solidarity with them and their government.

Venezuela and Cuba became close allies in the late 1990s under the respective leaderships of Fidel Castro and his younger disciple Hugo Chavez, both now deceased. Their close personal and political relationship resulted in extensive Venezuelan aid to the Caribbean island and a shared strategy for promoting Latin American unity against US influence in the region.