(Tribune News Service) — The Biden administration is playing down threats of imminent military action from Venezuela against neighboring Guyana, telling reporters on Monday that recently released satellite imagery reveal “small-scale” activity in “remote locations.”

The White House response comes after a Washington-based think tank released the images over the weekend, leading to concern that Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro might follow through on weeks of threats to annex Essequibo, a large portion of Guyanan territory.

“We’ve obviously been monitoring this closely ourselves. Our assessment is that whatever military movements there have been by Venezuela have been of a very small nature in size and scale, and scope,” White House National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby said in a daily press briefing. “We see no indication that there’s about to be hostilities, or that the Venezuelan military would be capable of conducting any significant military activities there.”

The satellite images showed fewer than 250 personnel, three patrol ships with nine staffers, and two short-range surface-to-air systems deployed to the border region, “which are unable to target anything in Guyanese airspace,” one National Security Council official told McClatchy and the Miami Herald.

“We see no significant Venezuelan military buildup under way near Essequibo,” the official said. “Venezuela’s military is ill-equipped to engage in significant, sustained military activity due to lack of maintenance, spare parts, fuel, and an extremely limited ability to forward deploy in difficult terrain or via maritime routes.”

“Still, we oppose any potential threat or use of force by one country against another,” the official added.

Principal Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer visited Guyana earlier this month in a high-level message of support for Guyana’s sovereignty — one part of a flurry of diplomacy around the South American nation ever since Maduro began threatening to take action late last year.

In December, the United Kingdom sent a warship to Guyana in an expression of support, angering the Venezuelans. The British Embassy told McClatchy that the UK will continue to work to ensure Guyana’s territorial integrity.

Angered by the leaked satellite photos, Venezuela’s military said that its presence in the area is not hostile, shrugging off reports that it is building a large base right at the border.

In Guyana, the government said that the increased military presence violates the terms of the peace declaration signed in December in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, in which both countries committed to lowering tension surrounding their century-old border dispute.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies, a U.S.-based think-tank, over the weekend published several satellite images that revealed that Venezuela was expanding its military base on the island of Anacoco and in the area of Punta Barima, at the Guyana border.

One of the images revealed the construction of an improvised landing strip — 1,200 meters long and 50 meters wide — on Anacoco Island, located on the Cuyuní River, just on the edge of the disputed border with Guyana. The photo also shows a Venezuelan helicopter in flight and the clearing and construction of a dirt road, connecting the landing strip to a newly enlarged base.

The leaked photos also show the construction of a new bridge connecting the Venezuelan territory to the Anacoco island and the concentration of a number of amphibious armored fighting vehicles.

“The expansion would likely indicate an increase in stationed personnel from platoon to company or battalion size, increasing personnel from around 50 up to and possibly over 300,” the center said in its report. “Notably, a mixed group of armored fighting vehicles (AFVs) can be seen consisting of six vehicles, likely Scorpion light tanks and at least one EE-11 APC. New trails or roads have also been built from the base south through the forest to the airfield, and there is evidence of recent tracked and wheeled vehicle activity. A Bell 206 helicopter can also be seen.”

Other photos also unveiled an increased presence of Venezuelan navy gunboats in the northern Sucre state.

Calling the center’s report an instrument of a malignant public campaign against the Venezuelan government, members of the Maduro regime said the increased military presence at the Essequibo region at the border portrays no aims of aggression.

The Bolivarian National Armed Forces ”makes a non-hostile presence at the Essequibo territory to advance in this sovereign purpose. Nothing will stop us!,” Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez said over the weekend through his X account.

But the photos seemed to have angered other members of the Venezuelan military, including Domingo Hernández Lárez, strategic operational commander of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces, who claimed his country was the obvious victim of espionage.

The photos are the result of “the North American imperialist spies in action!” Hernández Lárez said on his X account, adding that U.S. intelligence is ”working from laboratories set up for the Guyanese.”

Seeking to lower tensions, the leaders of Guyana and Venezuela met in St. Vincent and the Grenadines and pledged not to use force to resolve the dispute over which nation is the rightful owner of an oil- and mineral-rich region bordering the two countries, roughly the size of Florida.

The border dispute, which has been going on since the beginning of the 19th century, gained intensity following a referendum held on Dec. 3, in which the Caracas socialist regime asked Venezuelans to green-light the use of force to annex three-quarters of Guyana.

The Maduro government said that 95% of Venezuelans voted in favor of the forced annexation, but independent observers questioned the results, saying that the empty polling stations seen during the vote did not support claims that more than 10 million people participated.

Tensions between the two countries did in fact appear to have cooled since the referendum, but international observers say that the Caracas regime’s dealings are not completely on the level.

“There is likely more than meets the eye when it comes to Venezuela’s approach to negotiations”, the center’s report said, adding that the Maduro regime may be engaging in a strategy that aims to pair the threat of force with diplomatic incentives.

“Under this reading, Venezuela’s participation [in the negotiations] represents the diplomatic carrot, while its military engagement in provocative behavior acts as a stick to tilt negotiations in Caracas’s favor,” the report said.

“Recent activity by the Venezuelan armed forces within the Essequibo and in nearby waters observed in satellite imagery lends credence to this argument and suggests Maduro may be duplicitous in his commitment to resolve the dispute through diplomatic channels,” the center’s report added.

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