The President of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, has written to United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres about what he terms "an escalation of extremely serious aggression by the government of the United States of America".

In a five-page letter, President Maduro says the effects of such aggression transcend Venezuela's borders and threaten to destabilise the entirety of Latin America, the Caribbean and the international system as a whole.

Detailing several incidents, starting from the US government's deployment of the largest naval and air deployment in the Caribbean Sea, including a nuclear submarine off the Venezuelan coast, under the pretext of an anti-drug war, and 28 armed attacks against civilian vessels in the Caribbean Sea and the Eastern Pacific Ocean between 2 September and 18 December, resulting in the extrajudicial killing of 104 people, many of them shipwrecked, Maduro points out that Venezuela has not committed any act that justifies such military intimidation.

Maduro says, "These are not isolated incidents but rather a systematic practice of the lethal use of force outside any international legal framework and even outside the constitutional framework of the United States of America, where an intense debate is currently underway, both in Congress and among the public, which overwhelmingly condemns such actions."

He says in December the United States seized and stole two ships on the high seas, carrying approximately four million barrels of Venezuelan oil, and announced a total naval blockade against tankers transporting Venezuelan energy.

Maduro points out that "these actions constitute acts of piracy, as understood according to customary international law and the codified practice of the United Nations, as unlawful acts of violence, detention, or depredation committed on the high seas against ships and their cargo."

Maduro has appealed to the UN Secretary General to explicitly condemn these acts of aggression, piracy, and extrajudicial killings and demand an immediate cessation of the military deployment, the blockade, and armed attacks.

He also calls on the UN to "activate the mechanisms of the multilateral system to investigate, punish, and prevent the recurrence of these acts."