The American actions against Venezuela put Russia in an uncomfortable position: Once again, an ally that could not be protected has been overthrown. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro had used the same rhetoric against “imperialism” and “neocolonialism” that Vladimir Putin often uses when he positions Russia as a champion of a “multipolar world order.” Maduro was considered a friend in Moscow and “always a welcome guest on Russian soil,” as Putin’s congratulatory message said when the ruler once again declared himself the winner of presidential elections at the end of July 2024.
Putin was already a partner of Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chávez; Russia supplied Venezuela with weapons such as aircraft and anti-aircraft systems, there were joint military maneuvers, and between 2006 and 2017, Russia and the Kremlin-controlled oil company Rosneft granted the country a total of $17 billion in loans, according to the Reuters news agency.
No help in expanding anti-aircraft defenses
In return, Venezuela was among the small group of states that recognized the breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia from Georgia as states in Moscow’s wake, as well as Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. Shortly after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Maduro also supported Putin’s “special operation.” Moscow campaigned for Venezuela to join the BRICS, and Putin welcomed Maduro to the alliance’s summit in October 2024.
But when, as the Washington Post reported in late October, Maduro asked Moscow and Beijing for help in improving the country’s anti-aircraft defenses in light of the American offensive against Venezuela, nothing happened. Now Putin watched helplessly as the Americans launched a special operation to capture their partner, as a “classic act” of “imperialism” from which they wanted to protect the “global south,” as the exiled Russian political scientist Alexandr Baunow analyzed.
Putin reacted as he always does in such situations: he remained silent. On Saturday, Putin left it to his Foreign Ministry to dutifully condemn the Americans’ action as an “act of armed aggression.” Minister Sergei Lavrov later spoke by telephone with Maduro’s deputy, Delcy Rodríguez, and spoke of “firm solidarity with the people of Venezuela,” according to the statement. This could even be understood as a move away from Maduro, because after the overthrow of the Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad in December 2024 – another Russian partner who could no longer be protected – Putin explained the attempts at rapprochement with the new rulers, whom Moscow had just attacked as “terrorists”, by saying that they had always supported “the “Syrian people”. So not the regime.
Putin couldn’t even offer Maduro exile
Unlike in the case of Assad, with regard to Maduro, Putin was not even in a position to offer the deposed ruler exile. He would certainly have been taken in, but the Americans want to put Maduro on trial in the USA. The Russian Foreign Ministry later on Saturday simply called on the American leadership to “release” Maduro and his wife and to “resolve all problems through dialogue.”
It was noticeable that the ministry’s communications on Saturday were less sharply worded. On the one hand, it is obviously a matter of not further straining the relationship with American President Donald Trump, who is being relied on in the Ukraine war; With this in mind, Moscow reacted only cautiously last June to the American air strikes against Iran, another of Russia’s “strategic partners” with whom Trump is at odds. Putin’s relationship with Trump currently appears to be clouded; the American has apparently targeted Ukrainians and Europeans when working on his “peace plan” and does not seem to believe Russia’s counterintuitive story of an attack on Putin’s residence – which, as a side effect, puts the Russian ruler in a victim role that is otherwise associated with weakness.
On the other hand, continued loud outrage over the Venezuelan case would put Moscow at risk of appearing even more powerless, even in front of its home audience. The important evening news on state broadcaster Rossiya 1 did not even feature the Foreign Ministry’s condemnation of the American attack, but rather Lavrov’s conversation with Rodríguez and the vague “promise to continue cooperation with Venezuela.”
In the circles of the so-called Z channels, which celebrate the war of aggression against Ukraine, there was even recognition and envy over the special operation by the Americans, which had shown how to act against “decision-making centers”; this is a Russian propaganda formula for strikes against Kyiv and its Western supporters. There was talk of taking “Caracas in three hours,” after the presumed goal of the 2022 attack of conquering Kiev in three hours. A high-reach channel wrote that their own “special operation”, the war of aggression against Ukraine, was probably intended to be “quick, effective and resultant”. Chief of the General Staff Valeriy Gerasimov “hardly wanted to fight” for four years.
