Venezuela shake-up bad news for Putin

While it’s far too early to tell how the United States’ incursion into Venezuela and removal of the dictator Nicolás Maduro will play out, one thing is fairly clear: The operation is bad news for Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Maduro, one of the few heads of state to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, was a key Kremlin ally in South America. The Russian president saw Venezuela as a foothold counteracting U.S. influence. What’s more, the Maduro regime was, in a very real sense, a Kremlin project.

Russia has invested billions of dollars in Venezuela under Maduro and his far-left predecessor Hugo Chávez; by 2019, that investment reportedly totaled $17 billion in loans and credits. Add to this billions in weapons shipments and additional money spent on military advisers. All of that now goes up in smoke.

What’s more, the Russian weapons sent to Venezuela have been not only wasted but shown to be pathetically ineffective in a clash with the United States. American airpower quickly neutralized Venezuela’s Russian-made air defense systems.

Some have argued that President Donald Trump’s decision to invade and seize Maduro on a shaky legal basis helps Putin by speeding up the demise of the international legal order and sending the message that “might makes right.” Some also worry that Trump’s defiant assertion of the U.S. prerogative to enforce its will in the Western Hemisphere legitimizes Putin’s view that the former Soviet Union, and maybe even the former Soviet bloc, is his “backyard” where he can do as he pleases.

In an odd wrinkle on this argument, people have pointed to former Trump adviser Fiona Hill’s claim, in her 2019 congressional testimony, that Russia had informally offered the first Trump administration a “swap”: the Kremlin would ditch Venezuela, then in turmoil after Maduro’s rigged reelection, and the United States would give Russia a free hand in Ukraine. Hill said the administration refused.

But could there be a tacit “you have your backyard, we have ours” U.S.-Russia arrangement right now? Doubtful. Yes, Trump is sympathetic to the idea that powerful countries should be able to trample weaker states in their “spheres of influence.” But while Putin may think he has the right, he clearly lacks the might — as Trump’s Venezuelan blitz underscores.

The United States took less than three hours to capture Maduro — with zero Americans killed — and leave what is poised to be, at least for now, a U.S.-friendly regime in Caracas. The initial goals of Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine included capturing or killing Volodymyr Zelenskyy — or, at least, forcing him to flee abroad — and installing a Moscow-friendly regime in Kyiv.

Four years later, Zelenskyy is still Ukraine’s president, Kyiv is hopelessly out of Putin’s reach — and, about a million dead and wounded Russian soldiers later, the Russian army is fighting for war-shattered small towns in eastern Ukraine. The war-hawk segment of the Russian population is well aware of the contrast; some of the pro-war bloggers who have played a key role in Putin’s war propaganda machine have been talking openly about Russia’s humiliation.

Ukrainians, meanwhile, seem cautiously optimistic — perhaps because Trump seems to cool toward Putin whenever he sees the Russian strongman as weak. It remains to be seen how Trump’s success in Venezuela will affect his stance toward Ukraine. But in the wake of that success, Putin’s Russia certainly does look like a paper tiger.

Opinions expressed by Cathy Young, a writer for The Bulwark, are her own.

By Cathy Young

Cathy Young is a writer for The Bulwark.