Moscow considers the US policy toward Venezuela irresponsible, Washington provokes a deterioration of the social and economic situation in the Latin American country, Director of Russian Foreign Ministry’s Department of Latin America Aleksander Shchetinin told Sputnik in an interview.

“In our opinion, US policy toward Venezuela is very destructive and irrational. After all, in fact, what do our US colleagues do? First, they do not believe in the victory of the opposition. Thus, the prestige of the opposition is severely damaged. Secondly, against this background, they take steps to provoke … chaos and artificial deterioration of the social and economic situation in the country. They are provoking a lack of money supply, shortage of food, medicines and so on. In fact, they promote extreme discontent among the population and riot,” Shchetinin said.

The diplomat stressed that such approach was not “the policy of a responsible state, because it is an attempt to achieve own geopolitical goals by significant deterioration of the lives of ordinary Venezuelans.”

“And it is quite obvious that this deterioration, despite all the difficulties and mistakes in the government’s economic policy, is to a large extent caused precisely by sanctions and destructive policy toward Venezuela of external players, primarily the United States. Therefore, even though it can be expected that such approach will continue to exist, efforts must be made in a completely different direction from the point of view of political intelligence,” Shchetinin said.

The Venezuelan presidential election is scheduled for May 20. There are five candidates for the post: incumbent President Nicholas Maduro, opposition leader Henri Falcon, Reinaldo Quijada, Luis Ratti and Javier Bertucci. According to analysts, the election’s front-runners are Maduro and Falcon.

Source: Sputnik