About 5,600 Venezuelan soldiers participate in military “defense” high schools, which the country’s president Nicolas Maduro ordered today “in response to the challenge and her threat to the United Kingdom,” which sent a warship to the Guyana region amid the crisis over the disputed Essequibo region.

“I order the activation of a joint exercise of all Bolivarian (Venezuelan) Armed Forces in the eastern Caribbean, on the Atlantic coast, a joint action of a defensive nature, in response to the provocation and threat of the United Kingdom to our peace and national sovereignty” Maduro announced on radio and television.

The president of Venezuela showed footage of warships and fighter planes to patrol this zone.

The British frigate HMS Trent will arrive in Guyana tomorrow Friday and take part in naval exercises in that country’s territorial waters for “at least a week”. It is not scheduled to dock at the port of Georgetown, a source close to Guyana’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.

HMS Trent normally patrols the Mediterranean, but in early December headed to the Caribbean for an anti-drug operation.

In its statement, the Venezuelan government “categorically rejects the arrival” of this warship, which it considers “hostile action”. “The presence of this military vessel is a very serious matter” and for this reason “Venezuela urges the Guyanese authorities to take immediate measures for the withdrawal of HMS Trent and not to continue involving military forces in the territorial dispute” between the two countries.

The tension came to a head after Guyana’s government announced in September that it was launching tenders to exploit a huge oil field found in Essequibo. In response, Venezuela held a referendum on December 3 to annex the 160,000 square kilometer area it claims as its own. About 125,000 people, a fifth of Guyana’s population, live in sparsely populated Essequibo, which covers two-thirds of the country’s land area.

Venezuela maintains that the natural border should be the Essequibo River, as it was in 1777, during the Spanish colonial era. Guyana says the borders, drawn during British colonial times, were upheld by a Paris arbitration court in 1899.

Presidents of Guyana Irfaan Ali and Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro met on December 15 in an attempt to de-escalate tensions, but failed to resolve their differences as both remain in their positions.

According to Maduro’s announcement today, the first phase of military exercises will involve 5,682 troops, with F-16 and Sukhoi fighter jets flying over the area.

Britain, the former colonial power in Guyana, had already expressed its support for the country by sending its under-secretary of state for American affairs, David Rutley, to Georgetown.