Putin's silence on Venezuela and Iran
As was the case with the collapse of Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria, Moscow is not going beyond statements of circumstance on what is happening in Venezuela and Iran, two historic allies. The Kremlin's criticism is now directed almost exclusively at Europe and NATO, without involving Washington's responsibilities to any great extent.
Moscow (AsiaNews) - Since the beginning of the year, Russian President Vladimir Putin has rarely appeared in public, showing up only at Orthodox liturgies and releasing a video of himself immersing himself in icy waters for the Baptism of the Lord, leaving many doubts about the authenticity of this sacred exercise of extreme devotion.
However, what has raised the most concern is not the authenticity of his icy prayers, but his lack of statements on the upheavals in Venezuela and Iran, two of Russia's most loyal allies and suppliers of arms and oil, even glossing over the confiscation of ‘ghost’ tankers by the US Navy.
While Putin and Trump's main mediator and friend, Kirill Dmitriev, continues negotiations on the division of the world between the great powers, the Russian president limits himself to working meetings in his office with members of the government, such as the one with Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov to discuss Russia's industrial development and how to revive the dilapidated space programme.
A few days later, Putin met with another Deputy Prime Minister to comment on road traffic safety, congratulating him on the ‘progress in construction’ of 2025.
Russia has defended Venezuela for years, even decades, for economic, political and military reasons, since Soviet times in opposition to the United States. Moscow has always reacted against “flower revolutions” and anti-government demonstrations in the many authoritarian countries that have good relations with Russia, accusing Westerners of fomenting these uprisings to divide Russians from their more “friendly” regimes across the globe. Unable to remain completely silent, the Russian Foreign Ministry has issued protest notes, but without any reference to the opinions of the Kremlin leader.
Middle East expert Nicole Graevsky, who teaches at Sciences Po in Paris, believes that “the problem is not the Kremlin's silence, but the fact that it is impossible to see what manoeuvres are taking place behind the scenes”.
Journalist Ruslan Sulejmanov also believes that the lack of openly aggressive reactions, as was already the case with the collapse of Bashar al-Assad's Syrian regime, is part of a strategy that puts the war in Ukraine at the forefront, in exchange for American ambitions of domination and other shocks to the global geopolitical balance: ‘For Putin, the occupation of a few Ukrainian villages is much more important and symbolic than saving the regimes of Assad, Maduro and Khamenei.’
Times have changed since Putin's famous speech in Munich in 2007, when he stated that ‘a bullying state like the US has exceeded the limits of its national borders in all areas of world politics’.
Today, Putin's barbs are directed almost exclusively at Europe and NATO, without much involvement of Washington's responsibilities. While Trump threatened vague ‘very severe actions’ against Iran's leadership, the head of the Russian Security Council, Sergei Shoigu, spoke on the phone with his Iranian counterpart Ali Larijani to criticise ‘the interference of external forces in Iran's internal affairs’.
The lack of high-level reactions can also be explained by the long period of religious holidays, which ended on 19 January with the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus, and now a certain “awakening” is expected after the New Year break. In fact, the events of January highlight Russia's renunciation of a truly dominant role on the world stage, as all experts agree, contenting itself with controlling its own Eurasian geopolitical area and relying on the sovereignist policies of the United States.
Recent statements by Putin's ideologue Aleksandr Dugin and propagandist Vladimir Solov'ev about the impossibility of maintaining independence for the former Soviet countries, which must reunite with Russia, are perfectly in line with Trump's vision of spheres of influence and American affairs from Venezuela to Greenland, increasingly leaving the European Union in the corner.
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11/03/2019 10:26
