As Maduro confronts a crisis, Russia's footprint in Venezuela grows

[DonViejo]

By Mariana Zuñiga, Anthony Faiola and Anton Troianovski March 29 at 8:15 PM

CARACAS, Venezuela — After two Russian military planes landed near Caracas this month, the Trump administration issued stark warnings over President Nicolás Maduro’s ties to the Kremlin. But a vessel that arrived in the waters off Venezuela’s Caribbean coast a day earlier offered a more telling sign of a deepening relationship that is so alarming to Washington.

Venezuela has the world’s largest known oil reserves, with transport and sales of its thick, sludgy crude long dependent on chemical thinners purchased from the United States. After Washington barred U.S. companies from selling them to Venezuela in January — and warned foreign companies to follow suit — Maduro faced a dire predicament: How would he stave off the industry’s total collapse?

Like manna from Moscow,
an answer arrived in the form of a red-and-black tanker, the Serengeti, that loaded a cargo of thinners off the coast of Malta before arriving in Venezuela on March 22. The company that chartered the vessel: Russia’s state-run oil giant Rosneft.

“Relations between Russia and Venezuela are excellent,” Alexey Seredin, minister counselor at the Russian Embassy in Caracas, said in an interview. “At the moment, we are working to strengthen cooperation.”

The arrival of vital diluents is only one part of an expanding Russian footprint in Venezuela. Moscow is dispatching military personnel and equipment and is acting to offset U.S. sanctions by shipping Venezuelan crude to India for processing. The Kremlin is poised to increase wheat sales and dispatch more medical aid. This month, Venezuela also announced the opening in Moscow of a regional headquarters for PDVSA, its state-run oil giant.

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/as-maduro-confronts-a-crisis-russias-footprint-in-venezuela-grows/2019/03/29/fcf93cec-50b3-11e9-bdb7-44f948cc0605_story.html

[anarch]

1. imagine if this had happened during Reagan's presidency...

Hmm actually maybe don't; that probably wouldn't have gone well.

[Squinch]

2. How this is not the biggest story in the news is beyond me. Russia is in Venezuela. And

we are too busy trying to keep the giant idiot baby in his playpen to do anything about it.

Putin is a genius.

[myohmy2]

3. and remember...

...'no collusion'

...Russia and China are not going to walk away from the worlds largest oil reserves...

...our blackouts with coup seems to be stalling...

...could this be trump's re-election war?

...'no collusion'...

[Igel]

4. Or the billions of dollars that they're owed.

And which Maduro's been paying off with crude.

The PVDSA sanctions directly affected loan repayment of Putin's loans to Maduro, taking any money that passes through many Western banking channels into an account not controlled by Maduro and his cronies.

[triron]

5. Trump is secretly telling Putin to go ahead.