Alliance of the Aggrieved – Russia and Venezuela
Political Support/Крыша | Financial Support | Information Influence
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“Barbershop Whispers….Russia (BWR)” begins with “My Takeaways” on the main topic, followed by a discussion on the main topic. The last two BWR sections are “Follow-ups” on previous publications and “Quick Bites” on emerging events.
In last week’s BWR, I discussed Russia’s declining population and its military, economic, and social consequences.
In this week’s BWR, I discuss Russia’s relationship with Venezuela, another member of the aggrieved Western-sanctioned group of countries coalescing around the Kremlin.
Takeaways
FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS: The Kremlin and Miraflores Palace have a mutually beneficial relationship that allows them to exploit each other. Russia leverages its international political influence to protect, and its in-country economic interests to manipulate, Maduro. This allows Maduro to stay in power and Putin to project power.
RESOURCES: Unlike the US and China, Russia’s value proposition to Latin America is limited. However, for a Brother in Arms burdened by Western sanctions, Putin can deliver an affordable value proposition by way of aircraft parts for the aging Russian fighter jets, but not much else.
Alliance of the Aggrieved – Russia and Venezuela
Political Support/Крыша | Financial Support | Information Influence
Background
As the heir apparent to the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation inherited an established network of political and economic ties in Latin America (LATAM). The strongest continuing ties are with Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela - a post-Soviet client state acquired during Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez era. While Russia’s LATAM network is a shadow of what it was in Soviet times, the Kremlin efficiently exploits its historical Soviet relationship and shared anti-Western sentiments to secure its regional interests and benefit its global interests.
On the regional level, these exploitations are political support for autocratic regimes and supporting them in global organizations. A recent example of the latter is President Vladimir Putin’s invitation to Venezuelan “president” Nicolás Maduro Moros to attend this week’s BRICS summit in Kazan, Tatarstan (Russia). Another example is information influence operations for the dissemination of anti-Western propaganda in collaboration with Russian government media outlets.
The Kremlin has demonstrated the importance it places on Venezuela through its political support for Maduro and its investments in the Venezuelan energy sector.
Political Support
Over the past decade, the Kremlin has been key to Maduro’s staying power. In the aftermath of the 2018 Venezuelan presidential elections, Venezuelans across the country took to the streets to protest the fraudulent elections. Then, the National Assembly of Venezuela (NAV), Venezuela’s parliament, declared Juan Guaidó, opposition leader and President of the NAV, the legitimate President of Venezuela.
Maduro’s key allies, Putin and Xi, immediately offered their support for Maduro; the Kremlin characterized the election chaos as US intervention in Venezuela’s internal affairs akin to the color revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia. In a show of support, Putin sent 100 military personnel and two T-160s bombers to Caracas in 2018.
Sergei Ryabkov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, said,
“We will stand, if you’d like, together with this country in defense of sovereignty, in defense of the inadmissibility of encroaching on the principle of nonintervention in internal affairs,”
The US, at one point, had negotiated a deal with Maduro to allow him to leave the country. According to an interview with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Maduro was on the tarmac with other government officials about to fly to Cuba when Russian security personnel talked him out of it.
In 2024, another Venezuelan presidential election was rife with accusations of fraud. Protests broke out in Caracas and other cities after Maduro claimed election victory. The National Electoral Council (CNE), led by Maduro ally Elvis Amoroso, announced that with 80% of ballots counted, Maduro had secured 51% of the vote compared to 44% for opposition candidate Edmundo González. Edmundo González is a former Venezuelan diplomat and opposition leader.
The opposition quickly rejected the CNE results, asserting that the opposition’s tallies showed González winning with 70% of the votes. The CNE has refused to release detailed vote tallies, sparking nationwide demonstrations and international condemnation even from former allies such as Colombia and Brasil. Putin, on the other hand, congratulated Maduro.
After the elections, González sought refuge in the Spanish embassy in Caracas and was granted asylum. He left Venezuela on a Spanish Armed Forces flight in September 2024.
It should be noted that as protests broke out across the country, reports of soldiers wearing Wagner Group insignia have been reported among Venezuelan security forces since July 2024. Videos have also circulated on social media.
Putin invited Maduro to the BRICS summit, against the wishes of Brasilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who will be attending the summit. Lula da Silva did not recognize Maudro’s claim to the Venezuelan presidency. Lula da Silva will also hold the BRICS rotating presidency in 2025, and Maduro’s presence in Brasil would not be welcome as it now stands.
Assuming nothing changes, Maduro will be inaugurated as President in January 2025. However, González, now living in Spain, has vowed to return to Caracas to be inaugurated as president.
Financial Support
Russia is a major Venezuela creditor, having extended approximately $17B in loans since 2006. Roszarubezhneft, a Russian state-owned oil company, is also a significant shareholder in the Venezuelan state-owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA). Its shares in PDVSA were acquired from Rosneft, a Russian quasi-state oil company. PDVSA owes the Russian company $4.6B, and Roszarubezhneft is negotiating to take over the output sales in exchange for the debt owed. For the Russian firm to act as the off-taker, it will require a change in Venezuelan law that governs oil exports, and it comes at a time when an audit of PDVSA found $21B of unpaid invoices to intermediaries for past exports. This represents 84% of PDVSA’s exports since 2020.
Like Russia, Venezuela is under significant Western sanctions. In this area, Venezuela, like Iran, serves as a trader in the Art of Sanctions evasion. The institutional knowledge gathered over decades of sanctions experience is a good source of technique for the Kremlin.
Information Influence
The Russian message to Latin America is similar to the Soviet Union’s message of Western capitalist exploitation of the proletariat. This message is repackaged as “Colonists exploiting the Global South—or the Majority of the World—through Western sanctions and control of the global economic system.” The latter, about G7+ sanctions against Russia, resonates with many Latin American countries, particularly Venezuela.
According to the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), Russia’s Actualidad RT is one of Latin America's largest Russian information platforms. Actualidad RT has 17M Facebook followers, triple the number of its English-language equivalent, and 3.4M X (formerly Twitter) followers. Actualidad RT and Sputnik Mundo, another heavy-weight Russian media platform, are the most significant Russian Latin American media platforms and have content-sharing agreements with regional media organizations such as TelSur. TelSur, the creation of Hugo Chávez in 2005, is owned by the Venezuelan and Cuban governments and regional governments.
Actualidad RT has become embedded and accepted into the regional media landscape, as evidenced by numerous prestigious awards over the years presented to RT reporters by the Club de Periodistas de México AC.
Conclusion
Venezuela is an important component of Russian LATAM foreign policy. Through Venezuela, Russia projects power in Uncle Sam’s backyard and exploits it as a base for disseminating anti-Western propaganda throughout the region. For the Kremlin, it serves as a useful messenger against meddling Westerners in the internal affairs of a sovereign country. Other autocratic leaders see Russia’s political support for Maduro as evidence that Russia is a reliable partner in the face of Western interference or internal unrest.
Venezuela is also an energy-rich OPEC member whom Russia can manipulate, given its financial interest in PDVSA and $17B in sovereign loans.
For Maduro, Putin is a powerful ally that helps keep him in power.
Additional Reading(s)
Russia’s Footprint in Latin America (Barbershop Whispers…Russia, 3 Mar 2024)
Russia and Key Allies Vow to Stand by Maduro in Venezuela Crisis (The Guardian, 19 Jan 2019)
Russia’s intervention in Venezuela: What’s at stake? (Atlantic Council, 12 Sep 2019)
In Venezuela, Russia Answers US Support for Ukraine with “Symbolic Reciprocity” (Wilson Center, 15 Aug 204)
Follow-ups & Quick Bites
Follow-ups
The Kremlin Raises Maternity Subsidies
Russian Minister of Labor Anton Kotyakov announced first-time mothers will receive a lump sum of ₽677K (approx. $7K) starting in 2025. This is a tiny over the current one-time payment of ₽631K. Lump-sum payments will also be made to women who give birth to a second and third child.
The Kremlin expects more than 1M women will receive maternity payments in 2025. If the draft budget under consideration in the Duma is passed, it would allocate ₽537B ($6 billion) to the benefits program next year.
Many have criticized the Kremlin’s maternity benefits program, introduced in 2007, as too small of a financial incentive given the current inflationary environment and war.
The maternity subsidy program is a single element in a flawed policy to curtail Russia’s population decline. As discussed in BWR’s Mother Heroine piece addressing the Russian population decline, the other key variables of population size—emigration and immigration—are being driven by nationalism and xenophobia rather than economics.
The maternity subsidy program was scheduled to end in 2026, but Putin extended it until 2030 during his re-election campaign earlier this year.
Additional Reading(s)
Мать героиня (Mother Heroine) Will Not Save Russia (Barbershop Whispers…Russia, 13 Oct 2024)
Maternity Capital for the First Child will be Increased by 46K (TASS, 14 Oct 2025)
Russian Drone Plant Recruits Foreign Labor
The Russian Alabuga drone plant that assembles Iranian Shahed drones in Tatarstan has resorted to recruiting foreign labor from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Through a sophisticated, multilingual website, hundreds of foreign young women have been recruited under the auspices of a hospitality and catering work-study program. Instead of hospitality and catering training, they are put to work on drone assembly lines when they arrive in Russia.
Foreigners are being used to fill the labor shortage in the Russian war economy. The young women, 18-22, are recruited from Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, South Sudan, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and the South Asian country of Sri Lanka. The drive is expanding to other parts of Asia and Latin America.
The labor shortage is real and taking its toll on the Russian military and economy.
Additional Reading(s)
Мать героиня (Mother Heroine) Will Not Save Russia (Barbershop Whispers…Russia, 13 Oct 2024)
Africans Recruited to Work in Russia Say They Were Dupped (Associated Press, 10 Oct 2024)
Russian Military Facing Severe Manpower Shortages (Associated Press, 31 Aug 2022)
South Korea Believes North Korean Troops Killed in Donetsk
The Kremlin has denied South Korean reports that North Korean troops, fighting side by side with Russian soldiers, may have been killed in Donetsk.
According to South Korea’s defense minister, Kim Young-hyun ,
“North Korea is likely sending its soldiers to fight and die in Ukraine alongside Russian troops […] as Russia and North Korea have signed a mutual treaty akin to a military alliance, the possibility of such a deployment is highly likely […] the relations between Russia and North Korea are evolving to be almost as close as a military alliance […] as such, more North Korean troops could be deployed in the war, from how we look at it.”
In BWR’s publication of the 23 Jun 2024 issue covering the Russian-North Korean relationship, I mentioned the possibility of North Korean “volunteers” entering the Ukrainian theater based on the “Russia – North Korea Strategic Partnership Agreement”.
However, the likelihood that North Koreans will join Russian soldiers in active combat anytime soon is low for many reasons, starting with language barriers. The North Korean soldiers are more likely to be deployed for behind-the-lines support operations such as security at ammo depots, logistics routes, etc., well inside mother Russia. This will allow the Russian Army to replace these Russian soldiers behind-the-lines and delpoy them to the Ukrainian front where there is a shortage of combat troops.
This is another sign of a labor shortage in Russia. Watch this space.
Additional Reading(s)
Emerging Alliance of the Aggrieved – Russia and North Korea (Barbershop Whispers…Russia, 23 Jun 2024)
Zelenskiy says North Koreans Fighting with Russians in Ukraine (Reuters, 14 Oct 2024)
North Korean soldiers are likely dying for Putin in Ukraine, Seoul says (Politico, 8 Oct 2024)
Quick Bites
Serbian President Vučić Thanks Putin
President Aleksandar Vučić thanked Putin for helping his country secure sufficient natural gas supplies for the upcoming winter.
Russia and Serbia have a three-year gas supply contract which expires in March 2025.
The phone call is the first between the two leaders for nearly two and a half years.
Serbia has come under pressure from Western countries to align with the bloc and impose sanctions on Russia over Putin’s war on Ukraine, but Serbia does not appear to be moved by the pressure.
Additional Reading(s)
Serbia's Vucic thanks Putin for natural gas supplies (Reuters, 20 Sep 2024)
Vol 2, No 49 - BWR 20.10.2024
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