AS Venezuela enters the latter half of President Nicolas Maduro’s second term in office, the time is ripe for an overview of where the country currently stands, especially regarding ongoing attempts from the US and its allies (including the British government) to force regime change.

Since 2017, in pursuit of an anti-Maduro uprising in Venezuela, the US has levied an oil embargo, financial and secondary sanctions and a range of other measures targeting sectors such as banking, mining and food imports, amounting to a blockade akin to that imposed against Cuba since the 1960s.

As the blockade tightened, the impact on the lives of ordinary Venezuelans, particularly the poor, the sick and the elderly, became devastating, with far-reaching effects, leading to more than 40,000 deaths in 2017-18 alone. It was then cruelly extended at the time of the Covid pandemic.