In May of final 12 months, Russian President Vladimir Putin performed host to Venezuelan chief Nicolás Maduro within the Grand Kremlin Palace, simply forward of main celebrations in Moscow to mark the eightieth anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II.
It was a symbolic second that showcased Putin’s foremost alliance within the Western Hemisphere. Flanked by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Putin provided heat phrases of welcome for his Venezuelan counterpart, saying ties between Moscow and Caracas have been creating “thanks in large part to the personal attention” of Maduro.
Following restricted-format talks and an official breakfast, the 2 presidents went on to signal a treaty on strategic partnership and cooperation. But the seize of Maduro in a army operation ordered by US President Donald Trump has uncovered the boundaries of that partnership – whereas pointing the way in which for potential strategic alternatives for the Kremlin chief with regards to coping with Washington’s new period of gunboat diplomacy.
Condemnation by Russian diplomats of the US raid to seize Maduro, after all, was swift and unequivocal. In a weekend cellphone name to Venezuela’s Executive Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, now interim president, Lavrov “expressed strong solidarity with the people of Venezuela in the face of armed aggression,” in keeping with a readout supplied by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Speaking at a gathering of the UN Security Council on Monday, Permanent Representative of Russia to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya accused Washington of “generating fresh momentum for neocolonialism and for imperialism.”
But the voice of Putin – the one one that actually issues in Russian politics – was notably absent within the instant aftermath of the US regime-change operation. Unlike his Chinese President Xi Jinping, who condemned what he known as “unilateral bullying” by Washington, Putin didn’t make a direct and clear public assertion in regards to the raid.
Likewise, he has not but commented on the boarding and seizure of a Russian-flagged vessel by US forces Wednesday. Many observers are actually questioning how Moscow will reply to Washington’s new army adventurism.
At first blush, Maduro’s ouster does look like the newest in a sequence of geopolitical setbacks for Putin. In December 2024, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a longtime shopper of Moscow, fled to Russia after the collapse of his regime. Last June, the US launched strikes on nuclear facilities in Iran, immediately coming into a battle with a rustic that had additionally entered right into a strategic partnership with Russia earlier within the 12 months.
Russian officers have been fast to make clear that the strategic partnership between Moscow and Tehran didn’t oblige Russia to intervene militarily if Iran have been attacked. And whereas the strategic partnership solid between Maduro and Putin was billed by the Russian authorities as an expression of assist to “the fraternal Venezuelan people” in defending towards exterior threats, the incursion by US special-operations forces triggered no muscular response from Moscow.
The raid by US forces to seize Maduro was additionally a little bit of embarrassing publicity for Russia’s military-industrial advanced. Under Maduro’s predecessor, the late President Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s typical armed forces started retooling with Russian-made tools, together with the S-300, Buk and 44 Pechora air-defense techniques. Amid threats of army motion by the Trump administration, Maduro had additionally boasted that his nation’s army had positioned 5,000 Russian-made short-range anti-aircraft missiles in “key air defense positions.”
“Seems those Russian air defenses didn’t quite work so well, did they?” scoffed US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in remarks Monday at a naval shipyard in Newport News, Virginia.
But there are potential silver linings for Putin on a strategic degree. Trump’s assertion of a transparent sphere of curiosity in Latin America – the so-called “Donroe Doctrine” may give the Kremlin chief a little bit of rhetorical prime cowl with regards to justifying his personal imperial quest to dismantle an impartial Ukraine. And the Trump administration’s assured signaling that management of Greenland is next on the to-do list neatly enhances the view from the Kremlin.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia has lengthy asserted a proper to intervene in what’s known as the “near abroad” – the impartial states that emerged from the ashes of the USSR. And in remarks following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Putin made it very clear that he viewed restoration of empire as his supreme mission.
Those remarks echo feedback made within the wake of the Venezuela raid by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who told NCS’s Jake Tapper that “we live in a world, in the real world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.”
And Trump’s message that he’s keen to make use of drive to take Greenland – a self-governing territory of Denmark, a NATO ally – should even be welcome information to the Kremlin. Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian authorities has labored to use any fissures inside the transatlantic alliance, notably because the UK and European powers attempt to cobble collectively a “coalition of the willing” to back Ukraine with US support wavering.
At a church service to mark Russian Orthodox Christmas – noticed on January 7 beneath the Julian calendar – Putin appeared with uniformed service members and their households, publicly exhibiting resolve to proceed his warfare on Ukraine, regardless of ongoing peace efforts.
“Today we celebrate the wonderful, bright holiday of the Nativity of Christ. And we often call the Lord our Savior, because He came to earth to save all people,” Putin mentioned. “So, soldiers, the soldiers of Russia, always fulfil this very mission, as if commissioned by the Lord – to defend the Fatherland, to save the Motherland and its people. And at all times Russia has treated its soldiers in this way: as those people who, as if commissioned by the Lord, fulfil this sacred mission.”
The spectacle of Maduro being transported to a New York courthouse could draw inconvenient consideration to Putin’s failure to efficiently impose regime change on neighboring Ukraine. But Putin seems to be signaling that, within the world Game of Thrones, would possibly nonetheless makes proper.