International Response to Venezuelan Disaster

This episode is brought to you by Fox One . Watch all one hundred and four matches of the FIFA World Cup live in four K for just nineteen ninety nine cents a month, with three days free. Build your own mult iew,i ch voose up to three streams, and follow players spotlights. Stay on top of every moment with live stats, highlights, and instant replays. The FIFA World Cup, streaming live on Fox One, offers a subject to change CFOX com dot for complete terms and conditions. It's Friday, the twenty sixth of June. Welcome to the President's Daily Brief. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage. All right, let's get briefed. First up, the Trump administration is turning up the pressure on Cuba, while the Communist regime , well, the Communist regime vows to fight any potential military intervention. But new reporting reveals just how far Cuba's once feared armed forces have fallen since the Cold War . Later in the show, Ukraine continues taking the fight deeper into Russia, striking key oil facilities as part of its long range drone campaign , the attacks are reportedly forcing Moscow to reposition air defenses around the capital and other high value sites. Plus, North Korea is entering a new era of naval power,, uh commissioning its first destroyer capable of carrying nuclear armed missiles. And in today's back of the brief , Venezuela is reeling from its worst earthquakes in nearly six decades as rescue crews race to find survivors and the death toll continues to rise. We'll have the latest on the devastation and the ongoing rescue efforts . But first, today's PDB spotlight . The Trump administration continues to turn up the pressure on Cuba with new sanctions, criminal indictments, and an ongoing energy blockade . But what if that pressure were ever to become, well, kinetic? If the U. S. found itself in a military confrontation with Havana , what kind of fight would it actually face? Well, according to new reporting from both the Wall Street Journal and CNN , the answer is somewhat more complicated than you might think. For most Americans, Cuba's military is almost an afterthought, considered a relic of the Cold War. During the height of the Cold War, Cuba possessed one of the most formidable militaries in the western hemisphere, backed by billions of dollars in Soviet aid, the island fielded an active duty force of more than two hundred thousand troops. It operated moderate MIG fighter aircraft, advanced Soviet air defense systems, hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles and a navy equipped with Soviet built frigates . Unlike many militaries in Latin America, Cuba's armed forces back then also had something else, real combat experience. Throughout the seventies and nineteen eighties , tens of thousands of Cuban troops deployed overseas in support of Soviet interests, fighting in places like Angola and Ethiopia. Cuban officers gained experience commanding large scale operations, while their troops fought alongside some of the Soviet Union's best equipped units. At the time, some analysts described Cuba as having a first world military in a third world country . And then al,most overnight, everything changed. When the Soviet Union collapsed in nineteen ninety one, Cuba didn't just lose an ally, it lost the economic engine that kept its military alive. The fuel shipments stopped , spare parts disappeared. Maintenance contracts vanished. New aircraft and armored vehicles never arrived. Cuba entered what became known as the quote special period, an era of economic collapse that affected virtually every aspect of life on the island , and the military wasn't immune. Fighter jets require constant maintenance. Tanks need replacement parts, radar systems need trained technicians. Warships require enormous amounts of fuel and upkeep. Without the Soviet Union, Cuba gradually found itself preserving equipment rather than replacing it. Year after year, another aircraft would become sidelined. Another vehicle was cannibalized for spare parts. Another ship remained tied to the pier because there simply wasn't enough fuel to put to sea. Today, analysts estimate Cuba's active duty military numbers somewhere between forty thousand and forty five thousand personnel. It's roughly one fifth the size it was during the final years of the Cold War. Its air force, once among the most capable in Latin America, is believed to have only a handful of aircraft capable of flying. Its navy rarely ventures beyond coastal patrols. Much of its heavy equipment dates back to the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties. And perhaps nothing captures that transformation more vividly than the series of images recently released, not by American intelligence, but by Cuba's own government. One photograph shows a Soviet designed anti aircraft cannon being pulled down a rural road by a pair of oxen. It's the kind of scene you'd associate with the Crimean War of the late nineteenth century, not a modern times military just ninety miles from the coast of Florida . At first glance, it almost seems absurd , but that image actually reveals something important about how Cuba now thinks about war . Military analysts say H avera no longer plans to fight the US in a conventional conflict. It understands the imbalance is simply too great. Instead, Cuba has spent decades reshaping its doctrine around what it calls the quote war of all the people . The idea is relatively straightforward. If you can't defeat the world's most powerful military , make any invasion so difficult, so prolonged and so costly that your opponent begins questioning whether victory is worth the price . That means training local militias, dispersing weapons, preparing civilians, using guerrilla tactics instead of large armored formations, relying on small mobile units rather than expensive equipment that can't easily be replaced. In other words, Cuba's military strategy today isn't built around winning a conventional war, it's built around surviving one. And that brings us back to those remarkable photographs. It's tempting to laugh at the sight of oxen, towing artillery or soldiers training with equipment that's older than they are . But that may be missing the point entirely. Those images weren't leaked by accident. They were released by the Cuban government, and they appear designed to send a specific message. We know we're out matched. We know we can't compete with the US, plane for plane or ship for ship. But if you come here, we'll fight with everything we've got. Now that message has deep roots in Cuban history. Fidel Castro often invoked the ancient Spanish city of Numancia, whose defenders famously chose destruction over surrender to the Romans. It became a symbol of resistance that endured long after the Cold War ended . Whether that strategy would actually deter the US is another question entirely. But as tensions between Washington and Havana continue to rise , these images serve as a reminder that military strength isn't measured only by the sophistication of your weapons. Sometimes it's measured by what a country believes it's willing to endure once the shooting starts. All right, coming up next, Ukraine forces Russia to rethink its defensive posture with another wave of strikes on critical oil infrastructure . And North Korea unveils a powerful nube warship built to carry nuclear armed missiles. 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Learn more at Accenture. com slash spotify Welcome back to the PDB . Yesterday, we discussed how Ukraine's expanding campaign of long range drone strikes may be changing the way both Washington and Moscow view the war . Today, we're seeing fresh evidence that the strategy may also be forcing Russia to rethink how it defends its own territory. Ukrainian officials say their forces launched another series of long range strikes early Thursday morning, targeting an oil depot in Russia's Krasnodor region, along with two major oil refineries in the Republic of Bash Kurdistan, roughly nine hundred and thirty miles from Ukraine's eastern border. According to Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, the attacks are part of a broader effort to degrade Russia's ability to sustain the war by striking the fuel and the logistics and industrial infrastructure that supports its war machine. Russia acknowledged drone activity in both regions, but downplayed the damage. Officials said falling drone debris caused a fire at the oil depot , while authorities in Bashkuristan claimed production of the refineries was not disrupted, though those claims could not be independently verified. Russia's defense ministry did acknowledge, however, that their air defenses intercepted more than two hundred and sixty Ukrainian drones during the overnight bombardment. But the strikes themselves may tell only part of the story. Zelenskyy now says Russia has begun repositioning significant portions of its air defense network to protect some of the country's highest value assets , including Moscow, President Putin's residence in Valdai, and the Kerch Bridge linking occupied Crimea to the Russian mainland. According to Zelensky, hundreds of air defense launchers have been concentrated around the Moscow region, with dozens more reportedly shifted to Putin's residence from elsewhere across Russia. Reporters have been unable to independently verify those claims, and Russian officials are of course staying quiet on any redeployments . But it tracks with the recent acknowledgements from Putin himself that Russia's domestic air defenses required strengthening. If accurate, the redeployments illustrate exactly what Ukraine has been trying to accomplish with its expanding long range strike campaign. Modern air defense systems are expensive, they're limited in number, and cannot be everywhere at once, of course. Every launcher assigned to protect Moscow or the Kerch Bridge or other strategic sites is one that can't simultaneously def end oil infrastructure or military logistics hubs, airfields, or other facilities scattered across Russia's vast territory. In other words, Ukraine may be attempting to force Moscow into a difficult strategic tradeoff, either concentrate defenses around its most politically important targets or spread them more broadly and accept greater vulnerability. All right, I want to turn now to North Korea where, leader Kim Jong un's efforts to build a navy capable of carrying his nuclear threat beyond the Korean peninsula, took a major step forward with the commissioning of the regime's largest ever warship . The five thousand tonne Chao Hyun is North Korea's first true destroyer and its largest warship ever built. During the commissioning ceremony earlier this week, Kim hailed the ship's entry into service and vowed that quote, the program of equipping the Navy with nuclear weapons is following its planned course unerringly end quote. Now by itself, one destroyer doesn't suddenly transform North Korea into a blue water naval power , and it certainly doesn't put Pyongyang close to matching the capabilities of a Western naval alliance . But that's not what makes the announcement important. For decades, North Korea's military strategy has centered almost entirely on threatening its adversaries from land through ballistic missiles and artillery and nuclear weapons. Its navy, by comparison, has remained little more than a coastal force built around aging Soviet era vessels, they rarely operated far beyond the Korean peninsula. Kim has been determined to change that. The Chao Qian gives North Korea something that's never possessed before, a genuine ocean going surface ship that can provide a mobile platform for launching nuclear capable missiles. Kim Jong un has been laying the groundwork for this transformation for years . In addition to testing submarine launched ballistic missiles and unveiling what he claims is a nuclear powered submarine and developing unmanned underwater vehicles allegedly capable of carrying nuclear warheads, Pyongyang has steadily expanded the nuclear role of its navy. The Chao Hyun, which first appeared during sea trials last year before being formally commissioned this week , is now the clearest sign yet those ambitions are beginning to move beyond rhetoric. And there's another reason that regional and western military analysts are paying close attention . Increasingly, many believe that North Korea isn't building this fleet by itself . Since Pyongyang began supplying Russia with weapons and troops to support Moscow's war in Ukraine, intelligence officials and military analysts have increasingly pointed to signs the Kremlin has been repaying Kim with technology, industrial assistance , energy, and military expertise . South Korean military analysts now believe that some of the missile systems tested from the Cao Heung, including what appears to be a supersonic cruise missile, may already incorporate Russian technology. If true, it would suggest North Korea is acquiring advanced naval capabilities years faster than it could have developed them on its own. Thanks in part, of course, to a growing military partnership with Moscow. At roughly five thousand tons, the Chao Hyun is only about half the size of a modern U. S. Navy Arley Burke class destroyer. It also lacks the sophisticated radar, the integrated missile defense systems, and overall combat capability that makes American destroyers among the most capable surface warships anywhere in the world. Although many of the destroyers' advertised capabilities remain unverified , analysts describe it less as a traditional multi role destroyer and more as an attack ship packed with an unusually large missile payload for its size . But even if the Chao Qian falls well short of Western Naval standards, a heavily armed warship could steadily increase military tensions around the Korean peninsula at a time when Washington is already contending with China's expanding military presence across the Indo Pacific . And Kim Jong un made clear he has no intentions of slowing down . He pledged to build two larger surface warships every year, including a new ten thousand tonne cruiser, signaling that this destroyer is intended to be the foundation of a much larger naval expansion rather than just a one off achievement. , coming up in the back of the brief, we'll take another look at the latest from Venezuela, where a rescue crews are searching for survivors after the country's worst earthquakes in decades. More on that when we come back . Hey, Mike Baker here. Now , you probably know this, but getting high quality seafood used to mean settling for whatever the grocery store managed to stop, you know? 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If you're forty five or older and average at risk ask your he,althcare provider about screening for colon cancer with a colorgard test. You can also request a prescription at Colorgard. com . In today's back of the brief, I want to turn again to Venezuela, where the search for surviv ors continues after the strongest earthquakes to strike the country in more than a century left entire neighborhoods in ruins. Now, on this morning's PDB, we noted that much of northern Venezuela was still assessing the damage , and officials were only beginning to understand the scope of the disaster . But more than twenty four hours later, rescue crews are finally reaching many of the hardest hit neighborhoods, and with every collapsed building, they search , the picture is becoming far worse than officials first feared. The death toll has now climbed to at least one hundred eighty eight, while more than fifteen hundred others have been injured after the magnitude seven point two and seven point five earthquakes damaged at least two hundred and fifty structures across northern Venezuela . And all of those tallies are almost certainly going to rise . Not because rescue operations are slowing down, but because they're only now reaching communities that were cut off during the first chaotic hours after the quakes. Across Caracas and neighboring Laguera, which officials say suffered some of the worst damage, rescue crews contin ue digging through shattered concrete while heavy equipment works to stabilize buildings that remain at risk of collapsing. As burst water mains continue flooding roads and parts of the capital remain without power, Venezuelans around the world are desperately searching for loved ones, posting photographs online, in the hope that someone recognizes a familiar face. Interim Venezuelan President Delsie Rodriguez described the search effort as quote very arduous rescue operations, later calling the disaster a true tragedy. And as rescue crews slowly work through hundreds of collapsed structures , scientists are becoming increasingly concerned about where this disaster could ultimately lead. The U. S. Geological Survey warned that quote, high casualties and extensive damage are probable , estimating the final death toll could exceed ten thousand people and in, wor st case assessments potentially approach one hundred thousand . The reason for that grim forecast is straightforward. Rescue crews are only beginning to reach some communities. Hundreds of damaged buildings remain unstable, and many structures in the affected region were built using vulnerable brick and adobe construction . As the search continues, another effort is beginning to take shape. For the first time since Washington removed Nicholas Maduro from power , the U. S. is offering to help Venezuela recover from one of the worst natural disasters in its modern history. Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed that he'd spoken directly with Rodriguez and announced that American search and rescue teams, logistical support from the Department of War , and aerial damage assessments were being prepared. Washington has so far pledged one hundred fifty million dollars to humanitarian organizations operating in Venezuela, including the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. For the Trump administration, this disaster has become about more than humanitarian relief. President Trump has repeatedly pointed to Venezuela as proof that his administration's approach toward that country is producing results. Now , that relationship is facing its biggest test yet, not in curbing narcoteristsror or removing Caracas' socialist architecture, but in helping Venezuela's interim government carry out a massive search and rescue operation and begin what will likely be a year's long recovery . And that, my friends, is the President's Daily Brief for Friday, the twenty sixth of June. Now if you have any questions or comments and I hope you do, just reach out to me at PDB at the firsttv dot com . And of course, look at that. It's Friday, right? You probably already knew that. It's the end of the week and as always that means a brand new episode of our extended weekend show, the PDB situation report, hits the airwaves this evening at ten PM on the first TV . As always, you can catch it and past episodes on our YouTube channel and it is a humdinger of a YouTube channel. Just search up at President's Daily Brief, and you can find it also on podcast platforms everywhere. I'm Mike Baker and I'll be back later today with the PDB afternoon bulletin. Until then, stay informed, stay safe , stay cool. Last year, small businesses scored a major