MOSCOW, January 21. /TASS/. Statements by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that Washington’s objective is regime change in Venezuela confirm that Washington has been pursuing the policy of meddling in the affairs of independent nations, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Tuesday.
"We heard the US secretary of state openly admitting to his country’s campaign to destabilize the situation in sovereign countries," Zakharova wrote on Facebook. "In actual fact, Mike Pompeo’s two phrases provided the evidential base for Russia’s laws on foreign agents, sovereign Internet and so on."
According to Zakharova, Pompeo’s remarks prove once again that the United States "has never abandoned the tactics of meddling in the affairs of independent countries and the policy of regime change."
"Through soft power or by means of provocations and coups — different decisions are made in each individual case, whereas ‘democracy’ and ‘democratic structure’ of countries have been used by the United States for decades as a tool for shaping the domestic political situation in those countries, which Washington considers appropriate," she added.
On Monday, Pompeo said in an interview with Colombia’s Caracol TV that the United States’ objective was to make Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro step down. He explained that he did not consider Washington’s strategy in Venezuela to be a failure, citing as an example the strategy the United States employed against the Soviet Union, when many thought it would not work.