“I can assure you with my life and with the life of an entire country, that we will never be a backyard, colony, or slaves of any supremacist empire, or of anyone, not today, not tomorrow or ever,” Maduro declared while addressing the opening of the 2025-2026 academic year at the Bolivarian Military University of Venezuela (UMBV).

He underlined that the choice before Venezuela is clear. “Independence, freedom has no alternative, because today the option is not between homeland or death; it is between independence and colony; between slavery and free peoples,” he said, criticizing threats from the United States.

Maduro also recalled the legacy of former president Hugo Chávez, noting that he “put Venezuela at the forefront of building a world without colonial empires, of a free, united world of cooperation and peace, a multipolar and multicentric world.”

“The United States seems to be destined by dark forces to spread wars and misery around the world in the name of false freedom,” he added.