A surprise raid on the capital in the dead of night, ending with the capture of the country\u2019s leader. By the following day, the invading power announces it will rule the nation for an indefinite period.<\/p>\n
That was how Vladimir Putin<\/a> envisaged his full-scale invasion of Ukraine playing out in February 2022. Instead, it was Donald Trump who pulled it off in Venezuela, in an operation condemned by many as illegal, whisking away the Kremlin\u2019s historic ally Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, who now faces trial in New York.<\/p>\n In public, Russian officials have reacted with anger, condemning the attack as a flagrant violation of international law and a dangerous precedent. But beyond the rhetoric, there is a sense of grudging respect \u2013 and even envy \u2013 at the effectiveness of the coup that Moscow itself once imagined, but failed to execute because of a series of intelligence blunders and Ukraine\u2019s strong resistance.<\/p>\n \u201cThe operation was carried out competently,\u201d wrote the pro-Kremlin Telegram channel Dva Mayora, which has close ties to the Russian military.<\/p>\n \u201cMost likely, this is exactly how our \u2018special military operation\u2019 was meant to unfold: fast, dramatic and decisive. It\u2019s hard to believe [Valery] Gerasimov planned to be fighting for four years,\u201d it added, referring to Russia\u2019s chief of the general staff.<\/p>\n Such commentary has fed a mood of soul-searching among pro-war voices, with some openly questioning how Russia\u2019s promised blitzkrieg in Ukraine morphed into a protracted and deadly war.<\/p>\n Olga Uskova, a pro-Kremlin tech entrepreneur, said she felt \u201cshame\u201d on Russia\u2019s behalf in the face of how brazen the US intervention appeared to be.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the space of a day, Trump arrested Maduro and seemingly wrapped up his own \u2018special military operation,\u2019\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n Margarita Simonyan, Russia\u2019s chief propagandist and the head of RT, also weighed in on Telegram, saying Moscow had reason to \u201cbe jealous\u201d.<\/p>\n For more than two decades, Venezuela<\/a> sought to cultivate a network of anti-American allies \u2013 from Russia and China to Cuba and Iran \u2013 in the hope of helping to shape a new axis capable of standing up to Washington.<\/p>\n Yet despite Russia\u2019s foreign minister pledging support for Maduro\u2019s regime as recently as late December, few serious analysts ever expected Moscow to come to his rescue in any meaningful way.<\/p>\n Bogged down in Ukraine, Russia has, over the past year, watched other key allies fall from power or weaken sharply \u2013 from Bashar al-Assad <\/a>in Syria to an increasingly weakened<\/a> Iran \u2013 laying bare the limits<\/a> of the Kremlin\u2019s reach.<\/p>\n \u201cFor Russia, the situation is deeply uncomfortable,\u201d said Fyodor Lukyanov, a foreign policy expert who advises the Kremlin. \u201cVenezuela is a close partner and ideological ally, and Maduro and Putin have longstanding ties, leaving Moscow with little choice but to express outrage at US actions. Yet providing any real assistance to a country so distant, and operating in a fundamentally different geopolitical reality, is simply not feasible \u2013 for technical and logistical reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n There is also a more practical calculation.<\/p>\n Putin\u2019s priority, analysts say, is Ukraine \u2013 and maintaining a good relationship with Trump on that front far outweighs the fate of Caracas. Despite Moscow\u2019s pledges to defend Maduro, the Kremlin had scant appetite to risk angering Trump over a distant theatre.<\/p>\n \u201cPutin and Trump are currently focused on a far more consequential issue for Moscow: Ukraine. And for all the Kremlin\u2019s sympathies towards Caracas, it is unlikely to upend a much larger strategic game with a critical partner over what it sees as a secondary concern,\u201d Lukyanov said.<\/p>\n An oil pumpjack on Lake Maracaibo in Cabimas, Zulia state. US access to Venezuela\u2019s oil reserves could push global prices lower, threatening one of Russia\u2019s most important sources of income. Photograph: Gaby Oraa\/Bloomberg\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Still, Russia\u2019s loss of Venezuela carries several tangible costs for Moscow. If a US-friendly government were to emerge in Caracas, American military and defence specialists could gain access to large parts of the Venezuelan armed forces\u2019 arsenal, including advanced Russian-made systems supplied over the past decade.<\/p>\n Those include S-300VM air-defence systems delivered in 2013, as well as an undisclosed number of Pantsir and Buk-M2 systems transferred in late 2025.<\/p>\n Moscow has also extended billions of dollars in loans to Venezuela, much of which it is now unlikely ever to be recovered.<\/p>\n A more pressing concern for Moscow, however, is oil: US access to Venezuela\u2019s vast reserves could push global prices lower, threatening one of Russia\u2019s most important sources of income.<\/p>\n \u201cIf our American \u2018partners\u2019 gain access to Venezuela\u2019s oilfields, more than half of the world\u2019s oil reserves will end up under their control,\u201d wrote Oleg Deripaska, a powerful Russian billionaire industrialist, on Telegram. \u201cAnd it appears their plan will be to ensure that the price of our oil does not rise above $50 a barrel.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, some in Moscow see room for a bleak kind of optimism. Trump\u2019s kidnapping of Maduro, they argue, could deal a final blow to the rules-based international order and usher in a more nakedly 19th-century-style world \u2013 one in which power, rather than law, shapes outcomes and the globe is divided into rival spheres of influence, a model long championed by Russia.<\/p>\n \u201cTeam Trump is tough and cynical in advancing its country\u2019s interests,\u201d Dmitry Medvedev, Russia\u2019s former president and one of its most hawkish voices, wrote approvingly. \u201cRemoving Maduro had nothing to do with drugs \u2013 only oil, and they openly admit this. The law of the strongest is clearly more powerful than ordinary justice.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A surprise raid on the capital in the dead of night, ending with the capture of the country\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":675504,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7655],"tags":[332],"class_list":{"0":"post-675503","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-russia","8":"tag-russia"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115842814059946920","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=675503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675503\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/675504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=675503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=675503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=675503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}