内容摘要：sought to accelerate deportations to more complicated destinations.

sought to accelerate deportations to more complicated destinations.

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — As Venezuelans head to a Sunday election, they are again being used as political pawns. Opposition factions are urging abstention while the ruling party aims to tighten its grip on power — all while both sides appeal to the U.S. government for decisions that would have a greater impact on people’s lives than the vote’s results.The election for members of the National Assembly, governors and other regional offices will be the first to allow broad voter participation since last year’s presidential contest, which President Nicolás Maduro claimed to have won

The contest comes as the opposition’s most recognizable figure, María Corina Machado, remains in hiding to avoid arrest and most other leaders are in exile or prison due to theunleashed after the July election.“We lost confidence in voting. On July 28, they made fun of us,” said Carmen Medina, who sells plastic jewelry in the capital, Caracas. “I’m not planning to vote.”

A nationwide poll conducted between April 29 and May 4 by the Venezuela-based research firm Delphos showed that only 15.9% of voters expressed a high probability of voting Sunday. Of those, 74.2% said they would vote for the candidates of theand its allies, while 13.8% said they would vote for contenders associated with two opposition leaders who ignored Machado’s call to boycott the elections.

Sociologist Roberto Briceño, director of the independent Laboratory of Social Sciences research group, said many Venezuelans no longer see their vote as a tool to “generate change or improve the country’s dire situation.” After July’s election, he said, people are living with a “persistent sadness about the future” as “they feel they did their part” to get someone other than Maduro elected.

Venezuela’s most recent economic troubles pushed year-over-year inflation in April to 172%, bringing the price of food and other basic goods for a family to $409 a month, according to a group of economists. Meanwhile, the value of the monthly minimum wage, paid to state employees in Venezuelan bolivares, dropped to $1.36, which they supplement with a roughly $100 monthly government bonus and second or third jobs.“I quickly accepted the fact that my leg was gone. What’s the point of mourning? Crying and worrying won’t bring it back,” he says. By May 2024, he was back in uniform, describing the feeling as “returning home.” Vysotskyi now commands a team operating heavy drones for nighttime missions.

“For personal confidence in life, you need to come out of this not as someone broken by the war and written off, but as someone they tried to break — but couldn’t. You came back, proved you could still do something, and you’ll step away only when you decide to,” he says.In the fall of 2023, Zhalinskyi, 34, was still in the infantry when an artillery strike hit his position, severing his arm. He was the only one who survived from his group.

When he returned to the army, he embarked on the new role of navigator on evacuation missions, and he now maps routes, evaluates missions, and finds the safest paths to evacuate the infantry, allowing the driver to focus solely on the road.Ukrainian soldier Oleksandr Zhalinskyi of the Azov brigade, who lost his right arm in battle, poses for photo in Donetsk region, Ukraine, Jan. 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)