A Reaction Force that Reveals the Wear of the System
The Venezuelan crisis, deepened over more than a decade of economic decline, political repression, and institutional decay, continues to show signs of internal collapse in critical state areas. One of the most alarming signals comes from the very heart of the Bolivarian National Armed Force (FANB): the so-called Rapid Reaction Units (URRAS), initially conceived as tactical forces for immediate deployment, but now turned into a mechanism of human wear, a sort of sacrificial units whose costs fall on the soldiers themselves.
While having elite units is standard in any professional military structure, the manner in which Nicolás Maduro’s regime mobilizes and manages these forces suggests something radically different: a political, improvised, and dehumanizing use of military personnel, forcing them to fill operational gaps in a country where the institutional crisis has reached the barracks.
Forced Deployments and a Nation Turned into an Internal War Front
Internal documents from the FANB—including the “Designation of Personnel to Form the Combat URRA of the Bolivarian Army” headed for San José de Guáribe, in the state of Guárico, as part of the so-called “ZARAZA 2025” operation, as well as orders to reinforce Fort Los Caribes during the Christmas shifts—expose a pattern: URRA deployments are executed without planning, without logistics, and without minimum conditions for personnel.
Soldiers are summoned urgently, without sufficient prior notice, ripped from their homes and sent to areas where the state itself acknowledges the presence of irregular armed groups, criminal economies, and structures associated with organized crime. The orders not only evidence urgency; they reflect improvisation, a reactive response to internal threats that the regime can no longer fully control.
In several documented cases, personnel were moved without per diems, without guaranteed fuel, without assured food, and, at times, without appropriate operational equipment. The implicit message is devastating: soldiers are expendable and must sacrifice everything to maintain a narrative of territorial control that no longer exists.
The Misery in the Barracks: Soldiers Forced to Choose Between Serving or Feeding Their Children
The most serious complaint—repeated most often among military personnel—is the extreme economic crisis. With salaries equivalent to less than 15 dollars a month in many ranks, soldiers must support households that are already on the brink of hunger. The wives and children of military members survive, in most cases, thanks to informal jobs or remittances sent by relatives abroad. When a soldier is sent to a URRA, that fragile balance is shattered.
“They have to leave their families without food or money.”
This phrase, repeated by both officers and troops alike, summarizes the prevailing sentiment: the regime demands sacrifices that it does not compensate. The occasional bonuses—presented by the government as “incentives”—are insufficient even to cover the transportation costs to their own units.
The result is a disturbing paradox: while the official discourse insists on the “comprehensive defense of the homeland,” the very defenders lack the minimum means to sustain their households. The military uniform, a symbol of honor in any country, has become for many a guaranteed return to poverty.
URRAS: Reaction Units or Disposable Pieces in the Political Game
Far from operating as specialized elite bodies, URRAS have been transformed into instruments of political and territorial control, deployed according to the regime’s urgencies rather than national security criteria.
Operations with high symbolic names—“ZARAZA 2025,” “Bolivarian Shield,” “Fort Christmas”—conceal a less epic reality: territorial occupation to deter protests, containment of internal dissent within the FANB itself, improvised replacement of units weakened by desertions, and artificial displays of strength for national and international propaganda.
The discourse of “operational endowment,” “response to threats,” and “control of internal order” contrasts sharply with the actual use: filling gaps in a fractured military apparatus at the cost of the human sacrifice of young soldiers who lack the capacity to object to orders.
In the words of a retired officer consulted for this article, “The URRAS are not special forces. They are the bodies who are expected to die first.”
The Moral Collapse: When an Army Stops Protecting Its Own Soldiers
The institutional morale of the FANB is at one of the lowest points in its history. With increasing rates of desertion, covert resignations, denied discharge requests, and disciplinary processes used to punish those who demand decent conditions, the Venezuelan army operates defensively… internally.
The URRAS symbolize this wear:
a military system that feeds on the sacrifice of its members to sustain a political project that offers neither stability nor future.
No armed force can sustain national security if its members live in worse conditions than the communities they are supposed to protect. No regime can guarantee lasting governance if it relies on the impoverishment and exhaustion of those who carry the weapons.
The Urgent “Operation Rescue of Dignity”
The Venezuelan military leadership faces a historic dilemma. It can continue to act as a silent cog in a system that consumes its own men or it can recognize—late, but still in time—that institutional reconstruction starts with restoring the dignity of the Venezuelan soldier.
The URRAS today are a visible symptom of a deeper illness:
a state that demands total commitment but repays with abandonment;
that asks for loyalty but offers misery;
that demands sacrifice but denies basic rights.
The real operation that the FANB needs is not called “ZARAZA 2025,” or “Bolivarian Shield.”
It is called: Operation Rescue of Dignity. And it must begin from within, before the Venezuelan Army loses the only thing that still sustains any military institution: the morale of its own men.