Ioni Wells

Suomi will unpick a lot more of that, certainly oil and those other issues in a moment or two. But Ioni, in terms of the strikes from Saturday, how many people were actually killed? It's really hard to get reliable data on this. The government hasn't published official death tolls so far. We know that at least 32 Cubans were killed, who we know to be members of Maduro's security personnel, because Cubans traditionally made up most of his security network.

There is an anonymous network of doctors in Venezuela that tends to be fairly reliable. They get data from various hospitals around the country. They said yesterday that they had recorded at least 70 people dead from these strikes. They had calculated 43 bodies that had been taken to a morgue as well. There have been reports too that some civilians have been impacted by the strikes, including one older woman reportedly killed and potentially more injured as well.

Jopa mitä Donald Trump sanoi, Venäjän hallitus on edelleen päättynyt päätöksentekoon päätöksentekoon. Tällä hetkellä sen johtajana on Delcy Rodríguez, mutta myös muut ministerit, jotka olivat myös Maduroissa. Yhdysvallat on sanonut, että Delcy Rodríguez on johtajana.

So far, remaining loyal to her, which is really important in Venezuela, because the military is hugely powerful. Any leader would very much struggle to govern without them. It would be potentially dangerous to attempt to do so. I think that's a really interesting question we've had from a viewer. What happens if Delcy Rodriguez doesn't do as Donald Trump wants? Well, he has said...

that if she doesn't, in his words, do the right thing, code for doing what he wants, I think, that she could face the same fate as Maduro or even worse. So I think even though the US is not actually in charge, it certainly is holding a degree of influence over the government there right now through these threats, which they have seen what could happen and what happened to Maduro.

Why Venezuelans aren't feeling particularly rich from it at the moment? In part, as Sumi touched on there, it is due to widespread economic mismanagement over the last couple of years, as well as corruption in the country, but also a lack of investment really that has led to underproduction. It does have the biggest reserves in the world, but there's only about a million barrels produced per day, which might sound like a lot, but actually that's only 0.8% of global production.

And so this is one of the reasons that Donald Trump thinks that it has more potential for US companies to re-enter Venezuela once again. At the moment, most of the oil that Venezuela produces goes to China. So I think what Donald Trump is suggesting is that certainly more of that oil could go back to the US again.

In practice, though, I think we shouldn't get ahead of ourselves and remember there are still big barriers to this actually happening. One is, will these companies want to invest in a country that is politically, socially, economically risky and unstable still at the moment? Two is that oil prices are quite low at the moment. There's an oversupply of oil globally, meaning that, again, it's not a particularly attractive time to be investing. And three, the security question, too.

I think companies will be wondering whether or not it is safe and secure for them to be acting in the country right now.

Yes, there's a couple of points here. Constitutionally, in Venezuela, in theory, if they've sworn in an acting president, they are meant to have elections within 30 days. Now I understand there is a mechanism for that to be extended at least once or twice, but certainly as you say, Donald Trump has said that he doesn't think that's a realistic timeline, and that in his words, the US needs to fix the country before there can be elections. Now contrast that with what we've heard from the opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, she's said that

Her party, the opposition movement, would be prepared to go and contest free and fair elections again, which they are confident they would win. After the last elections in 2024, they published what were seen to be reliable voting tallies from electronic voting machines, saying that they, not Maduro, had won that election. But she has been somewhat, I say somewhat, majorly sidelined by Donald Trump so far. He said that she doesn't have the respect and support in Venezuela, something which I think many of the opposition would contest.

I think, to put it bluntly, Donald Trump has made it pretty clear what could happen to government ministers or the acting president in Venezuela if they don't do what he says. It is still a sovereign country. He doesn't suddenly have the right to control Venezuela, but I think he's made it clear that he feels he can control them through these kinds of threats.

It's the world's largest warship and the world's largest aircraft carrier. It is the newest, most advanced aircraft carrier that the US Navy has. It is essentially kind of like a floating airport. It's a ship which fighter jets can land on and take off from.

Ja luulen, että aloittamansa alueella on tietenkin uudestaan näkyvää sääntöä Yhdysvalloissa, kun puhutaan sääntöä Karabiinassa, jota moni katsoja uskoo olevan ei vain tarkoittamassa aiemmin tullut rauhaa, vaan myös vaikuttamalla sääntöä Nicolas Madurolle, Venäjällä presidenttiin. Sanoin, että Donald Trumpin yrittäminen Madurolle vahvistaa sääntöä. Miten nämä kaksi presidenttiä osallistuivat tähän asiaan?

There has been a lot of international condemnation of Nicolás Maduro over the last couple of years, not just because of the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela that has triggered large amounts of migration to the United States, millions of Venezuelans who have fled Venezuela in recent years, but also because of the fact that the last election in Venezuela last year was widely recognized internationally as neither free nor fair, and that has led to the U.S.

For example, not recognizing Nicolás Maduro as the legitimate president of Venezuela. Now another factor that has played into this is that the US has for some time accused Nicolás Maduro of being the head of a drug trafficking ring in Venezuela. Maduro has repeatedly denied these allegations and for his part he has always accused the US of imperialism, terrorism,

and of worsening the country's economic crisis through imposing sanctions on Venezuela. So there has been this long-standing tension between the two nations. Now why many people think that this isn't just about drugs, but also about trying to put military pressure on Nicolás Maduro, is that Venezuela itself doesn't produce drugs.

Suomessa on paljon kokainia, kuten Kolumbia, Peru, Bolivia. Kokainia on Venäjällä, mutta se ei ole erittäin suurin syrjintäryhmä. Siksi moni uskoo, että kun Yhdysvallat suosittelee Nicolás Maduroa syrjintäryhmänä, se voisi olla yleinen suunnitelma, jossa voidaan laittaa sääntöä hänelle ja hänen ympäristöönsä.

She works in insurance and says she's now earning less than she used to. I changed jobs and it doesn't pay well. Also, I don't know for how long this new job can sustain me in the future. A bad economic environment like this makes people feel down because we are not earning very much.

In a time of geopolitical uncertainty. People save more than they consume. And you need the consumption to make up a bigger share of the economy than it's doing today in China. So you have a very export-oriented and investment-driven economy. And what we see now is that these parts are too big for the economy to stay healthy.