Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has said he deployed 25,000 troops along the Caribbean coast and the border with Colombia amid soaring tensions with US President Donald Trump.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's show of strength raises the risk that brinkmanship between Washington and Caracas tips into confrontation.
In a message Sunday night on social media, Maduro said he had deployed "25,000 men and women from our glorious National Bolivarian Armed Forces" to the frontier with Colombia and the northeast coast, where the country's biggest oil refineries are situated.
The deployment aimed to ensure "the defence of national sovereignty, the security of the country and the fight for peace," he added.
He did not expressly refer to Trump, who has cited the need to combat Venezuelan drug traffickers, particularly in ordering the biggest naval buildup in the Caribbean in years.
Last week, US forces blew up a suspected drug boat with 11 people aboard in the Caribbean.
Trump said the boat belonged to the Venezuelan crime gang Tren de Aragua but provided scant proof of the claim.
The US leader has also threatened to shoot down Venezuelan military jets if they endanger US forces after two Venezuelan planes flew near a US Navy vessel in international waters.
The US has undertaken a substantial military build-up, deploying eight Navy ships.
This includes missile-equipped destroyers with a range of hundreds of miles, vessels carrying over 4,500 marines, and F-35 fighter jets, marking the largest demonstration of US military force in the region in decades.
Hegseth in Puerto Rico
Venezuela's armed forces run to around 123,000 members, according to military sources.
Maduro says a further 220,000 people have enlisted in a civilian militia.
Meanwhile, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth made a surprise visit to Puerto Rico on Monday, as the United States uses military forces it has deployed in the region to target alleged drug cartels.
Hegseth was accompanied by the top US military officer, General Dan Caine, and the two of them were welcomed by Jenniffer Gonzalez-Colon, the territory's governor, who announced the visit in a post on X.
She also thanked President Donald Trump "and his Administration for recognising the strategic value Puerto Rico has to the national security of the United States and the fight against drug cartels in our hemisphere, perpetuated by narco-dictator Nicolas Maduro."
Tensions rapidly escalate
The US alleges that Maduro heads a cocaine trafficking cartel and recently doubled its bounty to $50 million in exchange for his capture to face drug charges.
A Pentagon official confirmed Hegseth had travelled to Puerto Rico, but provided no further details.
The visit comes around a week after the US carried out a strike on an alleged drug-smuggling boat coming from Venezuela, an action that Trump said left 11 purported members of the Tren de Aragua gang dead.
Tensions between Washington and Caracas subsequently soared after the Pentagon accused Venezuela of buzzing its ships in the Caribbean following the deadly strike, while Maduro has also denounced the buildup of US military assets in the region.
There are eight US Navy ships involved in counter-narcotics efforts in Latin America (seven in the Caribbean and one in the Pacific) while Washington is also dispatching 10 high-tech F-35 jets to Puerto Rico.
Drug-smuggling vessels are usually interdicted and their crews arrested once they are identified, making the US strike on the alleged traffickers an extremely rare event.
US officials, including Hegseth, have said that strikes targeting drug cartels will continue.
