Venezuela’s National Bolivarian Armed Forces (FANB) “will never yield” to US sanctions, Foreign Affairs Minister Jorge Arreaza said on Saturday.
The foreign minister made the remarks after the United States announced new punitive measures against four military officials.
Earlier, US State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert reported the Treasury Department sanctioned the “senior military officers and officials for alleged corruption.”
“Nauert and the whole world should know the FANB will never yield before any foreign power, much less before the imperialist and warmongering forces of the supremacist government of Donald Trump,” Arreaza tweeted.
The first sanctions of 2018 come atop previous ones announced last year, including against Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro and Vice President Tareck El Aissami.
Ties with the United States have been less than friendly since Venezuela’s ruling socialist party (PSUV) came to power under the late reformist leader Hugo Chavez.
