Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
EEUU. In May of last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin played host to Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in the Grand Kremlin Palace, just ahead of major celebrations in Moscow to mark the 80th anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II.
It was a symbolic moment that showcased Putin’s main alliance in the Western Hemisphere. Flanked by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Putin offered warm words of welcome for his Venezuelan counterpart, saying ties between Moscow and Caracas were developing “thanks in large part to the personal attention” of Maduro.
Following restricted-format talks and an official breakfast, the two presidents went on to sign a treaty on strategic partnership and cooperation. But the capture of Maduro in a military operation ordered by US President Donald Trump has exposed the limits of that partnership – while pointing the way for potential strategic opportunities for the Kremlin leader when it comes to dealing with Washington’s new era of gunboat diplomacy.
Condemnation by Russian diplomats of the US raid to capture Maduro, of course, was swift and unequivocal. In a weekend phone call 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,” according to a readout provided by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
What we know about the US seizure of a Russian-flagged oil tanker
Speaking at a meeting 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 only person who really matters in Russian politics – was notably absent in the immediate aftermath of the US regime-change operation. Unlike his Chinese President Xi Jinping, who condemned what he called “unilateral bullying” by Washington, Putin did not make an immediate and clear public statement about the raid.
Likewise, he has not yet commented on the boarding and seizure of a Russian-flagged vessel by US forces Wednesday. Many observers are now wondering how Moscow will respond to Washington’s new military adventurism.
US European Command
At first blush, Maduro’s ouster does appear to be the latest in a series of geopolitical setbacks for Putin. In December 2024, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a longtime client of Moscow, fled to Russia after the collapse of his regime. Last June, the US launched strikes on nuclear facilities in Iran, directly entering a conflict with a country that had also entered into a strategic partnership with Russia earlier in the year.
Russian officials were quick to clarify that the strategic partnership between Moscow and Tehran did not oblige Russia to intervene militarily if Iran were attacked. And while the strategic partnership forged between Maduro and Putin was billed by the Russian government as an expression of support to “the fraternal Venezuelan people” in defending against external threats, the incursion by US special-operations forces triggered no muscular response from Moscow.
The raid by US forces to seize Maduro was also a bit of embarrassing publicity for Russia’s military-industrial complex. Under Maduro’s predecessor, the late President Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s conventional armed forces began retooling with Russian-made equipment, including the S-300, Buk and 44 Pechora air-defense systems. Amid threats of military action by the Trump administration, Maduro had also boasted that his country’s military had placed 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 level. Trump’s assertion of a clear sphere of interest in Latin America – the so-called “Donroe Doctrine” could give the Kremlin leader a bit of rhetorical top cover when it comes to justifying his own imperial quest to dismantle an independent Ukraine. And the Trump administration’s confident signaling that control of Greenland is next on the to-do list neatly complements the view from the Kremlin.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia has long asserted a right to intervene in what’s referred to as the “near abroad” – the independent 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 comments made in the wake of the Venezuela raid by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who told CNN’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.”
This may be the real reason Trump wants Greenland
And Trump’s message that he is willing to use force to take Greenland – a self-governing territory of Denmark, a NATO ally – must also be welcome news to the Kremlin. Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian government has worked to exploit any fissures within the transatlantic alliance, particularly as the UK and European powers try to cobble together a “coalition of the willing” to back Ukraine with US support wavering.
At a church service to mark Russian Orthodox Christmas – observed on January 7 under the Julian calendar – Putin appeared with uniformed service members and their families, publicly showing resolve to continue his war on Ukraine, despite ongoing peace efforts.
Putin, center, accompanied by military personnel and their families, lights a candle while attending an Orthodox Christmas service Wednesday at a church in Russia’s Moscow region.
“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 said. “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 may draw inconvenient attention to Putin’s failure to successfully impose regime change on neighboring Ukraine. But Putin appears to be signaling that, in the global Game of Thrones, might still makes right. (CNN)
