Venezuela and Ukraine, Putin and Trump's new world

by Stefano Caprio

The “Donroe doctrine”, as enunciated by Trump, now corresponds perfectly with the principles of Putin's Russkij Mir: both the US and Russia assess the countries within their sphere of influence, be it the American double continent or the former Soviet Eurasian space, as countries to be controlled, conquered, invaded and exploited.

The American operation in Caracas has provoked mixed reactions in Russia, starting with Putin's envy of Trump for having succeeded in two hours in doing what he has failed to do in four years, namely capturing and annihilating the “ucronazist” leader Zelenskyj and exhibiting him to the world as happened with the “drug trafficker” dictator Maduro.

Former President Dmitry Medvedev, on the other hand, expressed, in his usual heated jargon, a warning to the “comrades of Pindostan”, as Americans were contemptuously called in Soviet times: “now you can no longer reproach us for anything, not even formally”, since “Trump's team only cares about its own interests, in a cynical and violent way”.

In short, the “Donroe doctrine”, enunciated by Trump to defend the “Maga” ideals, now corresponds perfectly to the principles of Putin's “Russkij Mir”: the US, like Russia, considers the countries within its sphere of influence, be it the American double continent or the former Soviet Eurasian space, to be controlled, conquered, invaded and exploited, and no one should interfere, especially the debauched Europeans.

The American “pindosy” of the Soviet era were preceded by the Greeks of the Tsarist era, accused of “moral degradation” as early as the 19th century, as they were also opponents of the defence of the true Orthodox faith. It is no coincidence that the Russian war in Ukraine was also provoked by the schism with the Patriarchate of Constantinople. In modern Greek, “pindos” actually means “stinking pond”, something that must be got rid of and cleaned up.

Medvedev's heavy irony also reveals a certain sense of satisfaction, along the lines of “you see, now everyone is imitating us”, giving Russia the conviction that it has managed to return to ruling the world as in the good old days of the Cold War.

Between Ukraine and Venezuela, the end of post-Soviet globalism is thus being played out, from Yeltsin's liberal reforms in 1992 to Putin's special operation in 2022; with Trump's conquests in 2026, a new era of division of the world between various emperors, from Trump to Putin to Xi Jinping, would begin.

Now we can better understand why the word “war” has been officially banned from public discourse in Russia, to the extent that in texts, voina must be written as v***na with asterisks, otherwise you risk heavy fines: war is only a “religious ideal” proclaimed by Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, who at Christmas proclaimed soldiers to be “holy men acting on behalf of God”, while what is happening is a truly “special” operation, of which military conquest is only the façade, while the real goal is a new definition of relations between men and states, a new world yet to be rearranged.

We are really only at the beginning, and the farcical peace negotiations in Ukraine are becoming increasingly meaningless, leaving all the space for the buying and selling of oil, territories and the melting eternal ice caps, such as those of the much-coveted Greenland, the new “Ukraine” that marks the Arctic border of empires.

Trump has forced Venezuelan interim president Delcy Rodríguez, who is under his full control, to cut all commercial and financial ties with Russia and China, which have therefore raised their protest in the now mouldy rooms of the UN Security Council.

Their representatives have called for Maduro's release, while the Americans respond that “we are not waging war in Venezuela, and we have not occupied it”, just as the court sessions began to present the charges against the deposed leader in chains.

Russia's Vasily Nebenzia added at the UN session that the “incident” on 3 January in Caracas is “a harbinger of a return to the era of lawlessness and American domination imposed by force, chaos and immorality”, aggressive tones of the 20th-century Cold War and the “hybrid war” of the third millennium, but also an announcement of the re-establishment of roles.

After repeatedly justifying Russia's operation in Ukraine, Nebenzia complained that ‘a number of states’ in recent years have been applying international law ‘selectively, depending on the political situation,’ in practice doing whatever they want. Chinese representative Fu Cong added that Beijing “is shocked by what happened in Caracas”, condemning the “unilateral actions of the US”, thus also dusting off old language with new perspectives.

Moreover, threatening statements abound on the Russian side, such as that of the head of the Duma's information policy committee, Aleksey Pushkov, who speaks of possible ‘catastrophic consequences’ following Trump's triumphant proclamations, ‘in analogy with Washington's disastrous interventions in the past, attributing to itself the right to decide everything in its own hemisphere without regard for anything or anyone.’

The deputy head of the parliamentary defence committee, Alexei Zhuravlev, proposed responding to the arrest of Russian oil tankers by “sinking American ships” and then striking Europe with Oreshkin hypersonic missiles, considering the actions of the West ‘equivalent to attacks on Russian territory’ and given the euphoria of the unpunished Americans over the operation in Venezuela, the only adequate response to stop them is to ‘kick them in the face’.

The chief analyst of Russia's Energy Security Fund, Yuri Yushkov, on the other hand, expresses concern that the special operation in Venezuela will disrupt the global oil market, 'taking 500-600 thousand barrels per day, which could cause the price to rise to -70 per barrel, but without adding that this would be entirely to Russia's advantage, which has so far been forced to offer discounts to everyone in order to sell a few more barrels, where they are accepted.

The first to suffer from this “energy war” are the inhabitants of Cuba, who without Venezuelan oil are left without electricity and heating, and Trump is waiting to open his largest tourist agency in Havana, perhaps together with the one in Gaza, in a hedonistic union of East and West.

As Ivan Preobrazhensky, a political scientist at Radio Svoboda, points out, “Russia and Venezuela have been involved in global oil smuggling for years”, and Russia intervenes to condemn interference in the internal affairs of other states “only when it is not Russia itself that is interfering”.

Russian oil tankers usually leave Venezuelan ports flying the flag of Ghana or other states, and now Russian flags are being displayed asking the Americans not to touch them, but the US has already stopped a couple despite the presence of a Russian submarine for protection, as in the best naval war films.

Oil extraction in Venezuela has long been limited by sanctions, and what it manages to produce is the prerogative of companies allied with Russia, Iran and China, which the US now wants to drive out, perhaps to then come to an agreement with them on its own terms, as already happened in Panama, where Chinese influence was removed without the need for any military action, but only through financial investment agreements.

The game is on, not least because reviving Venezuelan oil production will require huge long-term investments, considering that the oil from those wells is of poor quality, very dense and heavy, and needs to be mixed with other American oil.

Trump's dream is to control global production, but it is not certain that this is really in the interests of American oil companies, which Trump cannot force with dictatorial methods in the manner of Putin or Maduro's heirs.

Nor will it be so easy to dismantle the Caracas regime, beyond the imprisonment of the president and his wife, given the close family ties between the Rodríguez family and the Maduro clan. The replacement for the leader in chains could play on two fronts, reaching an agreement with the Americans and maintaining relations with the Russians and Chinese, bearing in mind that Delcy is also Venezuela's oil minister.

In the end, Trump's moves may prove favourable to Putin, given that they have frozen all peace negotiations in Ukraine, which the Kremlin is clearly not interested in. The exclusion of Russian companies from the dirty business of Venezuelan oil, starting with Igor Sechin's Rosneft, the real head of the economic caste in power in Russia on the vast scale of corruption at all levels, could end up being convenient in turn, attributing to investment losses everything that has been stolen for years in Venezuela.

Russia has nevertheless shown itself incapable of helping its allies, and China is limiting itself to formal condemnations, demonstrating that the “global South” has no real substance on the world geopolitical stage, as already happened with the collapse of Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria or the military actions of Israel and the US in Iran.

Now a golden villa is being prepared to lay Ayatollah Khamenei to rest near that of Assad, and it cannot be ruled out that Maduro will be asked to be handed over to rest near former Ukrainian President Yanukovych, turning the outskirts of Moscow into a graveyard of elephants of times past, trophies of the emperors of the present and of the new division of the world.

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