Moscow, February 23 (RHC)-- The Russian government has warned that the United States and its allies from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are planning to deliver arms to the Venezuelan opposition.

"We have evidence that U.S. companies and their NATO allies are working on acquiring a large batch of weapons and ammunition in an Eastern European country for their subsequent transfer to Venezuelan opposition forces," said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova.

"The shipment will reportedly include heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, portable missile launchers and ammunition for light weapons and artillery systems. So this is what they mean when they talk about delivering humanitarian aid."

Zakharova also spoke of the U.S. President Donald Trump's words, which were addressed to the Venezuelan military, urging them to ignore the orders of Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro. "The U.S. direct call that took place these days, aimed at the Venezuelan military, urging them to ignore the orders of the legitimate leader of the country, represents the height of cynicism," Zakarova said.

On Thursday, at a meeting of the United Nations Security Council, Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, also warned that the U.S. is preparing an "outrageous" provocation in Venezuela under the pretext of delivering humanitarian aid.

"Apparently, in a provocative frenzy, our U.S. colleagues, who are now preparing an outrageous and obvious provocation on the Colombia-Venezuela border, were too enthusiastic and decided to participate in hints and propagation of fake news in the Security Council," the Russian diplomat said.

The Russian spokeswoman also warned of the seriousness of the incidents that the U.S. government could trigger as it tries to destabilize President Maduro. "The development of events in Venezuela has come to a critical point." She said that clashes between supporters of the government and opponents "could form a convenient pretext for military action to remove the current legitimate president from government."

The United States and its right-wing allies in Latin America have come out in support of a right-wing coup attempt against the Venezuelan government of President Nicolas Maduro after they supported a decision by opposition lawmaker, named Juan Guaido, to declare himself an “interim president” of Venezuela on January 23rd in violation of the country’s constitution.