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Business Insider could not verify the authenticity of the lawmaker's comments. FlightRadar data shows that an Ilyushin Il-76 cargo plane landed in Caracas on October 26, before flying to other Latin American countries known to be politically aligned with the Kremlin.
The aircraft was operated by Aviacon Zitotrans, a Russian cargo airline sanctioned by the US Treasury Department in 2023.

Washington said the company is known to transport defense equipment such as rockets, warheads, and helicopter parts, and listed Venezuela as one of Aviacon Zitotrans' delivery destinations.

It's not clear from the report which types of drones Venezuela requested. Caracas may be hoping to secure long-range reconnaissance drones, which would likely need to be linked up to satellites to have usable live feeds, or be lusting after one-way attack drones.
Iran has "a very rich portfolio of systems they could offer" to Venezuela, said Fabian Hinz, an expert in Iranian drones with the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) think tank.
It's hard to tell what Venezuela's Iran-stocked shelves look like, but it's thought to operate an early iteration of Tehran's Mohajer-2 reconnaissance drone. Caracas may have also acquired the upgraded Mohajer-6, an analog to the Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 that was popular in the early days of the Ukraine war.

Venezuela appears to have a handful of other drones with some Iranian components, Hinz told Newsweek. Many types of Iran's Shahed drones — infamously used by Russia in Ukraine — could have a range of more than 600 miles, including the Shahed-131.