Moscow Says Maintains Dialogue With All Venezuelan Forces In Favor Of Peaceful Settlement

ST. PETERSBURG (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 06th June, 2019) Moscow maintains contacts with all the political forces that favor settling the Venezuelan crisis peacefully, Aleksander Shchetinin, the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Department of Latin America, said on Thursday.

"We maintain contact with all the political forces in Venezuela that are ready for this [dialogue] for the sake of establishing a domestic political dialogue and finding political solutions to the problem that Venezuela is currently going through, for the benefit of the people and in order to promote socioeconomic development," Shchetinin said, when asked if Russia maintained contacts with the circle of self-proclaimed Venezuelan interim President Juan Guaido.

Venezuela has been suffering from a severe political crisis since late January, when Guaido illegally proclaimed himself interim leader in a bid to oust President Nicolas Maduro from power.

The United States and a range of its allies have endorsed Guaido and called on Maduro to step down to allow for a new election to be organized. China, Bolivia, Russia, Turkey and numerous other countries have, in turn, voiced their support for Maduro as Venezuela's only legitimate president.