OREANDA-NEWS. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova commented on media reports on the resumption of US oil purchases from Venezuela on Wednesday. Zakharova, in her Facebook, recalled that in March, US Special Representative for Venezuela Elliott Abrams, in an interview with Reuters, said that the United States would seek to stop any commercial deals with a Latin American country, calling for private companies with the Venezuelan government to do this. “Normally? Normally. And this is how it is every time. Everybody pushes everyone for something, then they change the maneuver by 180 degrees”, the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said.

Over the past years, Venezuela has been experiencing an acute social and economic crisis, which has worsened since 2014, when oil prices collapsed - its main export product. As noted in the World Bank report, the economic situation in Venezuela this year will continue to deteriorate rapidly, and its GDP will decline by 25%.

The situation in the country worsened even more after Jan. 23, opposition leader Juan Guaydo, whose appointment to the post of speaker of parliament two days earlier had the Supreme Court annulled, declared himself acting president. The United States recognized him as interim head of state, the countries of the Lima Group (with the exception of Mexico), the Organization of American States and most of the EU countries joined them.

The current president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, called the incident an attempted coup and announced the severance of diplomatic relations with the United States. In addition, information appeared that the country refused to use popular payment systems. Russia, Belarus, Bolivia, Iran, China, Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Syria and Turkey expressed their support.