VP Villarruel breaks ranks over Argentina-UK agreement

Argentina’s vice-president has broken lines with her government to voice her discontent over the nation’s recent agreement with the United Kingdom.

Victoria Villarruel said in an explosive post on social media on Thursday that the agreement inked this week by Foreign Minister Diana Mondino with her British counterpart David Lammy is “contrary to the interests of our nation.”

The vice-president, who comes from a military family, was referencing an accord signed on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York that paves the way for direct flights from Argentina’s mainland to the disputed Malvinas (Falkland) Islands, the UK territory over which the two sides found a brief war in 1982.

The agreement signed by Lammy and Mondino will see the restarting of weekly flights from São Paulo to the Malvinas with a monthly stopover in Córdoba, a route that was discontinued in 2020.

The diplomats also agreed "to organise a flight to the islands for the families of the fallen before the end of 2024 so that they may visit the tombs of the [Argentine] soldiers resting there."

Presented as a “diplomatic advance” by President Javier Milei’s government, the Foreign Ministry in Buenos Aires said the deal would also allow both sides to “move forward with concrete measures on fisheries conservation.”

But on Friday, less than 24 hours after the deal had been announced, Villarruel – a fiercely conservative leader who comes from a military family – broke lines on Friday to harshly criticise the deal.

The proposal, she argued, is “contrary to the interests of our nation” since it proposes cooperation “with the power that usurps our territory” – a reference to Argentina’s ongoing sovereignty claim.

“Everyone knows what Malvinas means to me and that this is my limit and obliges me to speak out. The proposed agreement announced with the United Kingdom is contrary to the interests of our nation,” said the head of the Senate.

“It proposes to provide continental logistical support to the occupation and in fact allow them to continue plundering our seas, to visit our islands with a visa and passport? Are they playing us for fools?” he continued.

Highlighting internal unrest over the deal within the ruling party, Villarruel said the accord gave away too much to the British government.

“They get material, concrete and immediate advantages, while they offer us crumbs as an emotional consolation and weaken our possibility of negotiation,” she declared.

For Villarruel, “it is unusual that while the United States offers us ships to protect our Argentine sea from extra-continental plundering, we propose to cooperate with the power that usurps our territory.”

The vice-president, whose father Eduardo Villarruel served in the Malvinas conflict, stressed that her remarks were not “against the government.”

“However, it is inevitable that I should speak out on this agreement, as it is an issue that touches every fibre of my identity and puts at stake the permanent interests of our great nation,” she concluded.

The Malvinas, located 400 kilometres off the coast of Argentina and almost 13,000 kilometres from the UK, was the scene of a 74-day war between the two nations in 1982, which ended with Argentina’s surrender.