Context: Donald Trump was presented with the Nobel Peace Prize from Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado. She gave him her award in gratitude for the removal of Nicolas Maduro from power. The Nobel Committee stated that while a laureate may give the prize to anyone, Machado, not Trump, will go down in history as the recipient, and that cannot be changed.
“Why hasn't a single shot been fired from the Russian air defense weapons stationed in Venezuela [to protect Nicolas Maduro]?” asked hosts Alena Shvaiko and Dzmitry Rubashny on the program “Aktualny Mikrafon” on the First National Channel of Belarusian Radio. The blame lies entirely with the size of the country's military budget, replied political analyst Andrei Lazutkin:
“There were Belarusian Buks, of course. There was even an S-300 there. Well, experts say, again, if you calculate Venezuela’s annual military budget, they say it is $4 million. That is just one launch of that S-300,” Lazutkin stated on air January 12, 2026.
The World Bank’s website indeed reports that $3.9 million was allocated for Venezuela’s military spending in 2023. The amount, listed in the national currency, is approximately 11,000 trillion bolivars (a figure with 21 zeros). The World Bank uses data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). We compared them with the institute’s reports. It turns out the numbers match, but the units of measurement do not.
The original source refers to billions of bolivars. For example, in 2023, the Venezuelan Ministry of Defense’s spending reached 11 billion bolivars, or $300 million. In 2024, that amount rose to $600 million. The World Bank website apparently made an error in currency conversion.
Venezuela does not publish its full budget, but national authorities stated that the 2026 budget exceeds 5 trillion bolivars, with 5.5 percent allocated to security and defense. At the official exchange rate, that is about $800 million. In other words, it is 200 times more than what Lazutkin calculated.
Last year, Venezuelan authorities planned to spend $4 million on strengthening the air defense system alone, rather than on the entire defense budget. However, there is no reliable data on how the country’s budget is actually being executed or what specific amounts are being spent on what. That information is classified.
In the first month of 2026 alone, this is the third fake story related to the detention of Nicolas Maduro circulated by Belarusian state media and debunked by the Weekly Top Fake team. On January 3, Ryhor Azaronak linked the success of the U.S. operation to Western plans to attack Belarus during a CTV broadcast. Two days later, Radio Minsk host Aliona Radouskaya spoke about fake protests by Maduro supporters.