Elliott Abrams assured that the Russian S-300 deployed by Venezuela had been damaged by power outages

The United States delegate to Venezuela, Elliot Abrams, said thatThe S-300 anti-aircraft system has been damaged during recent power outages and this is one of the reasons why a hundred Russian technicians They arrived in Caracas last week.

Abrams offered this explanation when a press conference of the State Department in which he evoked the growing military presence of Russia and Cuba in Venezuela.

"One of the things they do seems to be, and we believe it from the beginning, "They are helping the regime with the S-300 missile system, which was apparently damaged during the power outage."said Abrams. "What else do they do? They are watching"he added.

But this is the first time about possible damage or configuration errors in the system, which includes missile launchers, radar and fire control centers, following a series of mbadive power outages that affect the entire country and they were blamed for the poor general condition of the Venezuelan power grid.

The regime of Nicolás Maduro, for its part, denounced an alleged campaign of sabotage.

On the specific threat of the Russian presence, Abrams replied that "there are not many Cubans, there are thousands in the intelligence services but its presence is very pernicious and the same can be said of nearly 100 Russians. "

"What we can say is that your the presence will not do anything good for the people of Venezuela. It does nothing to solve the problems it faces, be it political, social or economic ", he added.

"Probably for the diet, it's like shooting yourself in the arm. But although the numbers are not important, we have seen that in the case of Cubans allowed the diet to do things that they could not have done", continued the US delegate.

Asked about the growth of these foreign contingents, Abrams said not knowing if the number of Russians will increase, refused to comment on the equipment transferred to the country on both aircraft because it is clbadified information.