Venezuelan government bolsters forces following Trump administration strikes
The Venezuelan Armed Forces and army tanks drive along a highway during a military exercise in Caracas, Venezuela on September 20, 2025. (Photo by Ivan McGregor/Anadolu via Getty Images)
(VENEZUELA) — Venezuelan officials say that they have bolstered their armed forces after the United States conducted another strike on vessel that originated from the country, which he claimed carried drugs.
Venezuelan leaders said roughly 284 battle fronts are operational, poised for either land or sea conflict, two officials with knowledge of the Venezuelan government’s plans told ABC News Friday.
Militias, which are heavily armed, have also been assigned to protect the coastal region at high alert, according to the officials. The officials claimed some 4.5 million militia members were deployed.
Qatar, a key U.S. ally that assisted with negotiations in the Israel-Gaza conflict, is helping with the conversations between the American and Venezuelan governments, the sources said. In the meantime, Venezuelan embassies in Norway and Australia were closed by the government.
On Thursday, the Trump administration announced that it had issued an airstrike against a vessel that originated from Venezuela, claiming it was a drug-smuggling craft operated by narcoterrorists, the sixth such strike since the summer.
At least two survivors from the strike are now in custody aboard an American vessel after being rescued by helicopter, according to a person familiar with details of the incident.
Earlier this week, Trump threatened to attack Venezuela by land, confirmed ongoing covert operations inside the country and ordered bombers to fly in circles off its coast in what appears to be an unprecedented show of force intended to pressure the country’s president, Nicolas Maduro, to step down.
“President Trump believes that Nicholas Maduro is an illegitimate president, leading an illegitimate regime that has been trapped in drugs,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday.
When asked on Friday about the alleged CIA operations in Venezuela, Trump told reporters, “I wouldn’t say that.”
“But some interesting things are happening around the world, I will say that,” he said.
Sources with the Venezuelan government said that Trump’s threat of covert operations is “purely staged,” and refuted the president’s drug trafficking allegations.
When a reporter asked Trump about Maduro offering “everything” including natural resources for mediation, the president shot back:
“He has offered everything. You know why? He doesn’t want to f— around with the United States,” Trump said and ended the news conference.
-ABC News’ Anne Flaherty and Luis Martinez contributed to this report.
(LONDON) — French authorities arrested two men in relation to last week’s major jewel heist at Paris’ Louvre Museum, the French National Police confirmed to ABC News, amid a nationwide manhunt for the perpetrators.
One suspect was arrested at 10 p.m. on Saturday at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport while trying to board a plane bound for Algeria, police said.
Police did not offer any information on the timing or circumstances of the second suspect’s arrest.
Both men are suspected of having been part of a team alleged to have robbed the Louvre last week. They are both from Seine Saint Denis, a northeastern suburb of Paris, police said.
No new information has been made public on the whereabouts of the stolen jewels that Paris Public Prosecutor Laure Beccuau estimated to be worth $102 million.
French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez praised investigators for making the arrests in a social media post on Sunday.
“I would like to offer my warmest congratulations to the investigators who worked tirelessly as I asked them to and who always had my full confidence,” Nuñez said in the post. “The investigations must continue in accordance with the secrecy of the investigation under the authority of the specialized interregional court of the Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office.”
“We will continue with the same determination! Let’s keep going!” Nuñez added.
Authorities launched a nationwide manhunt for the Louvre suspects after the theft from the museum’s Apollo Gallery on the morning of Oct. 19, shortly after the museum opened to the public.
The stolen items included crowns, necklaces, earrings and brooches, some of which once belonged to Emperor Napoleon and his wife.
The team of thieves drove up to the side of the museum in what police described as a “mobile freight elevator” equipped with a metal ladder on the back that was extended up to a window, according to the Paris police.
“They deployed the freight elevator, securing the surroundings with construction cones, before accessing the second floor, in the Apollo Gallery, by breaking the window with an angle grinder,” according to the police statement.
“Inside, they then smashed two display cases, ‘Napoleon jewels’ and ‘French crown jewels,’ using the angle grinder and stole numerous pieces of high-value jewelry,” police said.
French President Emmanuel Macron vowed that authorities would catch those responsible for what he described as an “attack on a heritage that we cherish because it is our history.”
French Culture Minister Rachida Dati, who is overseeing the investigation alongside the Justice Ministry, described the heist to ABC News as “a simple, but spectacular operation.”
Soon after the theft, investigators said four suspects left the scene on two motorbikes, winding their way through central Paris and last spotted speeding southeast on Highway A6 out of Paris and in the direction of Lyon.
(LONDON) — August saw an easing in the scale of Russia’s long-range strike campaign on Ukraine, according to data published by Ukraine’s air force and analyzed by ABC News, though Moscow continued to launch massed and deadly bombardments on Kyiv, other major cities and critical infrastructure targets.
Over the course of August, Russia launched 4,216 air attack vehicles — 4,060 attack or decoy drones and 156 missiles — at a daily average rate of nearly 131 drones and five missiles, Ukraine’s air force data showed. No night of August passed without a Russian attack, the Ukrainian government said.
The reason for the apparent drop off in the overall intensity of the attacks is unclear. Moscow has shown no sign of abandoning its maximalist demands in the ongoing peace talks. Meanwhile, Ukrainian long-range strikes have been targeting military industrial targets across Russia, including facilities involved in the production of drones and missiles.
Ukrainian forces said they shot down or suppressed just over 85% of the drones and nearly 68% of missiles launched by Russia during August.
The overall number of long-range Russian drones and missiles launched in August was around 34% less than in July, according to the Ukrainian air force’s figures.
But the month ended with a notable uptick in Russian activity. From Aug. 1 to 15 — the day of the summit between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Alaska — Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched a total of 1,131 drones and 21 missiles, at a daily average of 75.4 drones and 1.4 missiles.
But from Aug. 16 to 31, the scale of attacks increased. In the second half of the month, Ukraine’s air force reported 3,001 Russian drones and 135 missiles at a daily average of 187.5 drones and 8.4 missiles.
Neither Russia nor Ukraine publish data on their own strike campaigns. Ukraine’s air force publishes a daily tally of Russian drone and missile strikes, while Russia’s Defense Ministry only publishes figures of Ukrainian drones it claims were shot down.
The overall number of Russian drones and missiles reported by Kyiv in August was the lowest monthly total since May. Still, three nights during August each saw more than 500 drones and missiles launched into the country, despite the comparatively smaller scale of month’s attacks.
The human toll continues to rise in Ukraine, despite Trump’s repeated appeals for Moscow to end long-range strikes — and despite his public frustration over Putin’s refusal to do so.
The U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine said that July marked the deadliest month for Ukrainian civilians since May 2022, with 286 people killed and 1,388 people injured. The mission said it verified casualties in 18 of the country’s 24 regions in July. The mission attributed nearly 40% of the casualties in July to “long-range weapons such as missiles and loitering munitions.”
The mission is yet to publish its data for August. But there were several high casualty events during the month, perhaps most notably the drone and missile barrage on Kyiv that killed at least 23 people on the night of Aug. 27-28.
The bombardment on the night of Aug. 20-21 also saw one person killed and more than a dozen more injured, while another large combined strike on the night of Aug.29-30 killed one person and injured at least 29 people.
In July, Russia set a new monthly record for the number of drones and missiles fired at Ukraine. The month saw Russia launch 6,443 aerial vehicles — 6,245 drones and 198 missiles — into the country, of which 89% of drones and around 61% of missiles were defeated, according to Ukrainian figures.
June saw 5,438 drones and 239 missiles fired into Ukraine, with a daily average of 181 drones and nearly eight missiles. The air force downed or suppressed 87.2% of all drones and 73% of missiles during June.
And in May, Russia launched a total of 3,835 drones and 117 missiles, for an average of around 124 drones and nearly four missiles each day. Across the month, 85.7% of drones and 57% of missiles were defeated.
Despite the nightly attacks, August saw two key diplomatic summits, intended as springboards to end Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor which began in February 2022.
First, Putin traveled to Alaska to meet with Trump — the first face-to-face meeting between Russian and American leaders since 2019.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, accompanied by a host of European leaders, then traveled to the White House to discuss possible peace terms.
Trump framed both meetings as positive and encouraging. But subsequent developments have been lacking. Trump’s proposal for a meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy — an idea the Kremlin has repeatedly dodged since the two men last met in 2019 — has yet to come to fruition, with Kyiv accusing Moscow of continued evasion.
Data published by Russia’s Defense Ministry suggests that Ukraine maintained the level of its own drone strike campaign through August.
The ministry said its forces shot down 2,783 Ukrainian drones over the course of the month, at an average rate of nearly 90 per day.
Across July, the Defense Ministry in Moscow reported downing 3,008 Ukrainian drones at an average of around 97 per day.
In June, the ministry reported downing a total of 2,368 Ukrainian drones, with an average of almost 79 drones per day across the month. Those figures were down from May, during which the ministry said it shot down 3,611 drones with an average of 116 per day.
Local governments in Russia often publicly state death tolls for specific attacks, although the Kremlin doesn’t release a regular country-wide tally, making it difficult to track over a period of time.
Last month, Rodion Miroshnik — a Foreign Ministry ambassador-at-large responsible for analyzing Ukrainian attacks in Russia — told the TASS state news agency that 15 people were killed and 140 injured during one week of attacks in August. The toll included casualties in frontline regions, as well as those deep inside Russia caused by long-range drone strikes.
Zelenskyy said on Sunday that Kyiv is planning “new strikes.”
(NEW YORK) — The U.S. State Department said it was revoking the visa of Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who had traveled to New York this week for the United Nations General Assembly.
“Earlier today, [Petro] stood on a NYC street and urged U.S. soldiers to disobey orders and incite violence,” the State Department said Friday in a post on X. “We will revoke Petro’s visa due to his reckless and incendiary actions.”
Petro, who traveled to New York for the U.N. General Assembly, participated in a pro-Palestinian demonstration earlier Friday. In video clips posted to social media, he can be heard appealing to American soldiers — urging them to disobey orders from President Donald Trump.
Based on the video clips, there did not appear to be any uniformed U.S. service members in the audience listening to Petro.
Petro, responding to the revoking of his visa on Saturday, posted a lengthy response to President Donald Trump on X, saying that “international laws grant me immunity to go to the UN and that there should be no reprisals for my free opinion, because I am a free person.”
He also criticized Trump’s advisers and urged the president to “see humanity clearly and what’s happening” in regards to the situation in Gaza and the crackdown on migrants in the U.S.
