Under Putin, Russia has established a relationship with Venezuela, and was heavily involved in the country until recent years. The Chavez and then Maduro regimes bought Russian weapons with sizeable loans from the Kremlin, Moscow ordered its energy companies to invest in Venezuelan oil fields, and Russia boasted of having secured a foothold in the U.S.’s backyard. With Trump’s swift and successful operation to arrest Maduro, the situation has changed. What are the implications for Russia’s global posture? What can the Kremlin do, and will it do anything? Will deposing Maduro lead to a situation in which Venezuelan oil floods global markets with U.S. help?
The transcript was automatically generated and not edited prior to publication.
Alexander Gabuev. Welcome to the Carnegie Politika podcast. I'm Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin. Happy New Year to all our listeners. I guess many of us made a wish that 2026 would be more peaceful than 2025, and that was probably a low bar. But the new year has started with a daring U.S. military operation to extract Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro from his residence in Caracas. When justifying this move, U.S. President Donald Trump said that the deposal of Maduro was needed to help the Venezuelan people, enable American control over the country's oil riches and liberate Venezuela from the malign influence of China and Russia. The situation on the ground is very fluid and there are too many moving pieces. so we won't discuss the future of Venezuela, but we are going to talk about Russia's involvement in the country. For the last quarter century, Moscow was one of the major partners of the Venezuelan regime. What is driving the Kremlin's interest in a country so far away? How much can Russia shape outcomes in Venezuela? And how may political change in this country affect the global oil markets and by extension, the Russian economy? To discuss all of these issues, I'm joined by a familiar face, my colleague Sergey Vakulenko, whom regular listeners know well. Before joining Carnegie as a senior fellow covering energy policy 2022, Sergey was the chief strategy officer of GazpromNeft, a Russian oil company that was involved in Venezuelan oil as well. So welcome, Sergey. I'm always learning a lot from you and looking forward to doing it again.
Sergey Vakulenko. Hi, Sasha.
Gabuev. We really need to start with discussing the oil landscape there, if you [don't] mind, because I guess that Rosneft, the major Russian oil company and many others have been involved there since at least 2008. Is that correct?
Vakulenko. Before we do that, could I turn the tables on you?
Gabuev. Okay.
Vakulenko. Because I remember, 10 years ago when we met first, I was a oil executive. You were a reporter for Kommersant. And I remember reaching your reading your pieces where you were covering Venezuela in general, the Russian-Venezuelan relationship. And it's, I think, an interesting story how Russia got involved in Venezuela in the first place. So, before we go dive into the oil barrel, could we cover the basics first?
Gabuev. Okay, you ambushed me, but I'm ready to tell the story. I think it's actually more than 10 years, Sergey. I think that I joined Carnegie in 2015 and was indeed a reporter and editor at Kommersant, which by the time was still a pretty independent paper, though it belonged to an oligarch, Alisher Usmanov, who was -
Vakulenko. It was late January 2014. I do remember the date.
Gabuev. Okay, perfect.
Vakulenko. And place.
Gabuev. What a memory. Well, I indeed covered Russia-Venezuela ties a lot as member of President Dmitry Medvedev's press corps and part of Sergey Lavrov's traveling press corps. I was with him actually in Venezuela in 2012 and Hugo Chavez, then president, died from cancer in March 2013. So it was still Chavez time. But the interesting story of Russia's involvement in Venezuela has probably two beginnings. One is Putin's meeting with Hugo Chavez in the year 2000, when Putin was a young, Western-sympathetic, democratically elected Russian president and Hugo Chavez was a new leader of Venezuela who came with the support of the military, but was not as much of an anti-Western leader that he has become. So that was a journey and he was definitely very ideological, but there was not as much anti-U.S. still that became so pronounced. And definitely that was a very different time for Russia's relationship with the West. Russia was trying to finish the war in Chechnya and then really make an amicable relationship with the United States of America and the West in general. So ties with Venezuela started as a business relationship. Venezuela was a market for the Russian defense industry, and Russia started to sell its equipment, including Sukhoi fighter jets, air defense systems, many others. And that was a very normal commercial relationship because Venezuela had money to pay. But then the second beginning was in the year of 2008, when the relationship between Russia and the West was entirely different. Russia invaded Georgia, its neighbor, when the Georgian government, led by then-President Mikhail Saakashvili, wanted to reestablish control over two breakaway regions, South Ossetia, and later Abkhazia, Russia counterpunched and occupied these two internationally recognized regions of Georgia, marched into Georgia itself, stopped short of capturing the country's capital, Tbilisi. That was definitely the lowest point at the time between Russia and the West. So one of the jobs of the Russian government was to seek recognition of these two little statelets that Russia managed to seize and then recognize as independent states. Russia was going around the world with a big list of countries that it thought might recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but there were not that many volunteers. Then in late 2008, the first country to do so was Nicaragua, led by Hugo Chavez's close ally. It was a Sandinista regime. So Daniel Ortega, the president of Nicaragua, recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Then Russia was working a lot with Venezuelan regime to do the same. And when Chavez was visiting Moscow in 2010, he suddenly said to his counterpart, then-President Medvedev, that he decided to recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia. I was there. I was the first reporter to ask both presidents a question about that and how much Moscow would be expressing its gratitude. Both presidents were elusive in their open remarks, but then a lot of senior Russian officials told me that Russia would be heavily involved. The two major departures in the relationship that they indicated to me was one, Russia will be providing loans and from now on, Venezuela will be purchasing Russian weapons through Russian loans rather than oil proceeds. And then second, big news was that Russia will be involved in Venezuelan oil sector. And the leader of that process was Igor Sechin, at the time Deputy Prime Minister of Russia, who was appointed as the chairman of the Russian Intergovernmental Commission with Venezuela. So he, unlike Sergey Lavrov and others, was not formally involved in diplomacy, but was really the frontman of Russia's engagement with Latin America. So, Sergey, turning the tables back to you, let's start with Sechin, by the way, whom both of us know. Why do you think he became this frontman for Russia's engagement with Venezuela and with oil in particular? Like, he was Putin's deputy chief of staff at the beginning of his career in the Kremlin and then became the all-powerful oil and energy czar. How did that happen?
Vakulenko. Well, we have to look earlier in time. You remember Putin around 2000, but we have to look at Putin around 1992, when Putin was appointed to be the chairman of Foreign Economic Relations Department of St. Petersburg Mayor's Office. In that capacity, Mr. Putin had two young bank carriers. Assistants. Aides, if you wish. One was an economist, another was somebody who was proficient in foreign languages. That's what you need, right, if you do foreign economic relationships. One person's name was Alexei Miller, sounds familiar, and another was Igor Sechin. And these two gentlemen proved themselves extremely loyal and close to Mr. Putin. And when he got transferred to Moscow, he'd forgotten his young assistants, took them with him, and one has become chief of Gazprom, quite surprisingly to many, an industry outsider. The second one, Mr. Sechin, was actually in charge of the nationalization of Yukos, of taking Yukos off Mr. Khodorkovsky's hands and so on. He was one of the architects of how it was all done. So that was his first brush with the oil industry. I guess the rest is history. And that's probably why and how Mr. Sechin become has become really interested in the oil industry. Then indeed he became the vice prime minister at the time when Mr. Putin was prime minister himself in charge of oil and gas. In that capacity he was in some sense a boss
of his former colleague, Mr. Sechin, and later he became the head of Rosneft. So he really, really got excited about oil and gas, albeit his initial training is as a philologist in Portuguese language. That's how it happened, really.
Gabuev. He was also a military interpreter for Soviet troops in Angola, if my memory serves me correct, or Mozambique.
Vakulenko. Yes, I think he was trained in that capacity and I think he was indeed serving his obligatory military service in there for a couple years, yes.
Gabuev. Right. So all the time, the suspicion was that he's part of the same intelligence system as Mr. Putin. So he is an alumni of the KGB or at least military intelligence, but not just a humble Portuguese translator.
Vakulenko. He might be.
Gabuev. Anyway, I think that to me explains his involvement with the Latin world. He also speaks Spanish. I was in a couple of government meetings with him when he was sitting together with senior Venezuelan officials and was correcting the Russian interpreter and kind of helping him to translate better. He was very hands-on and traveled to the region multiple times. And I think that one of the flagship projects of Russian involvement in Venezuela was the establishment of the Russian Oil Consortium that would bring together the five largest Russian oil companies to extract oil. By the time it was explained to me and my colleagues and was projected as a very lucrative business and many senior officials, Putin's press secretary told me that "it's not charity, Sasha," like, the portrayal of that as gratitude for recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which, as you can imagine, not that many countries wanted to recognize, is plain wrong. And actually, we're going to make a lot of money in Venezuela because it's very rich in oil. And on paper, that's the fact. The country has the largest oil reserves in the world. If you listen to President Trump and his justification of involvement in Venezuela, it's not only about narco-terrorism, as he's framed it, but also control of that oil. So, Sergey, I remember watching Russian companies first reluctantly going into this consortium. and then leaving this consortium. Only Rosneft, the company that Igor Session has, actually stayed in the country. So my first question is: is oil business in Venezuela actually lucrative? Is this the oil El Dorado that just waits for a competent owner to come and bring these volumes back to the international market? Or is there somehow something that's hidden and makes it not so attractive as it seems on paper?
Vakulenko. There's an excellent German word, jein. Yes and no, portmanteau. So on the one hand, yes, it is. It can be extremely lucrative. Yes, Venezuela is sitting on huge oil reserves. Venezuela is one of the founding members of OPEC. There were times when Venezuela was producing more oil than the Persian Gulf as a whole, all the Persian Gulf countries, more than Saudi Arabia and others, close to United States, more than the Soviet Union and so on. Oil has been with Venezuela as long as there was Venezuela, even before that. There is one oil region in Venezuela called Maracaibo Basin, which has been exploited since the 1920s. And it's an older, tired basin, let me put it this way. It is still producing, it's a wonderful resource, but it's quite tired. There were other discoveries. There was a huge discovery in 1986. Those fields are already in fast decline as well, but there is such a thing called the Orinoco Belt. That's a place where there are billions and billions of barrels, probably even a trillion barrels. The problem is that oil has been severely biodegraded, eaten by bacteria. This happens. There are bacteria eating oil and they have eaten away all the light fractions, the gasoline and diesel fractions, leaving all the only the tarry, gunky remainder in there. It is still valuable. It is absolutely wonderful source rock. The eaten oil is sitting in sandstone is highly highly porous, but it's terribly difficult to extract, terribly expensive to extract, and terribly expensive to handle once it is on the ground. This oil reserve has been known for decades. In 1976, Venezuela nationalized its oil industry just as many countries did back then - from Mexico in 1938, but [then] there are Algeria, Saudi Arabia and all others. It stayed on friendly terms with Western oil companies and in the 80s, Venezuela went through a period called apertura petrolera, the opening of the petroleum industry. Various Western companies were welcomed back as JV partners. However, when the Chavista government or the Bolivarian revolutionary government came to power in early 2000s, a new wind of nationalization was in the air and by 2007, the government was offering much tougher terms to the JV partners. Legally, they could do it. They were fully within their right, but at least two major U.S. companies, Conoco and Exxon, said that they wanted none of it. The Venezuelan government told them, well, you have really no choice, take it or leave it. And if you refuse, there would be a forced purchase. That's what happened. So by 2007, all these extremely difficult reserves in the Orinoco oil basin were left without a foreign partner. PDVSA itself, with its all extremely rich heritage, is technically an extremely competent company. However, back in the early 2000s, when there were strikes of oilmen against the Chavez government, there were purges, and PDVSA lost roughly half of its cadres, who were replaced by loyalists. But loyalism rarely makes for technical prowess. And that was exactly the case. So, Venezuela was looking for technical partners who could bring technical expertise, capital and the like. And the year, bear in mind, is 2007, when the oil price is shooting into the three-digit zone. So it does look lucrative. Yes, it might cost some $50 a barrel to handle that oil, but if oil price is $130 or $140, what's the problem? Yes, sure, there was the great recession of 2008. By 2010, oil prices were back into the three-digit zone. So yes, that project was technically difficult. But it might be profitable, it might be lucrative. And also it was the time when Russian oil companies were on the rise, they were ascending, they were trying to make themselves global oil companies on par with Conocos, Chevrons, Shells and Totals; global companies with Russian roots. So, they were actually looking towards international expansion. They were considering buying many assets internationally. They were considering buying Acreage in Gulf of Mexico. So, things were right. What Russian companies don't like to do is they don't like to go into JVs with each other. Russian bears don't like to share their lairs with anybody else. With foreigners, maybe, but not with their kin. And definitely they wouldn't be particularly keen to go ahead under the leadership of Rosneft. Nobody trusted Rosneft, nobody trusted and Mr. Sechin. So in a sense it was an obligatory thing. That was an imposed socially internationally responsible corporate action. That's why all these companies were dragging their feet. But it was already the time when nobody would dare to say no openly to the government. So they faked enthusiasm and they formed the consortium with the idea of, "okay, let's try it. Let's not to spend too much money on it. Maybe something would come out of it. Well, let's give it a try." So that's how this Petra Miranda consortium came to life. One of the plots in the Junin block of Orinoco oil belt, Junin 6, became available. Venezuela was looking whom to give it to. The Russian consortium came to [the] line. So yeah, the two countries were thinking about tying some sort of knots between them, extending the relationship and economy; oil sounded like a good subject area for that. So that's how this Petra Miranda consortium came to life.
Gabuev. So, [in] Fall 2008, Igor Sechin starts to travel to the region as deputy prime minister in charge of many of the key bilateral relationship with Nicaragua, Venezuela, Cuba as well, fishing for recognition of Abkhazia in South Ossetia. That's one of the major motivations. In September 2009, Hugo Chavez delivers the official recognition on his visit to Moscow. Then this consortium by the time intensifies and so on. But then what happened is that the companies, because of the reasons you described, sold their share to Rosneft and Rosneft became the sole owner of the majority of Russian assets in Venezuela, right? How did the company fare between, let's say, 2012 and 2022? Also because the U.S. slapped sanctions against Venezuela during the first Trump administration for this presidential election that was obviously rigged. That was already Maduro's period. How did that work?
Vakulenko. That's 2019, but the consortium was in trouble much earlier than that. The death blow happened in late 2014 when oil prices plummeted and much of this quite expensive heavy oil production became uneconomic. It has also meant that PDVSA became cash-strapped. Well, it was actually cash -trapped even before because the Chavista government a) was squeezing PDVSA dry for cash, so it could spend money on socially important projects, and b) it was imposing socially responsible projects that had absolutely nothing to do with the oil business on PDVSA, on which PDVSA had to spend money. Petra Miranda was a JV between PDVSA and the Russian consortium. All the expenditure on that project was supposed to be proportionate to the shares. So ,if there is capital work and budget, PDVSA was supposed to contribute money into that. Well, PDVSA wasn't in a position to do so. Russian companies had the option of carrying PDVSA. Spending money on their own, keeping a ledger of how much PDVSA would owe them for all the capital expenditure done on PDVSA's behalf, with the idea that one day when the project turned cash-positive, they would recoup that money from PDVSA's share of the proceeds. But this effectively means that you lend money to PDVSA on rather uncertain terms. Again, back then, the oil price outlook has changed quite substantially. So most of the Russian oil companies were actually favoring this outcome because it would give them an excuse of not spending too much. Probably a little bit on administrative staff, on their second E's and so on, but not on the actual expenditure in there. They were not really selling so their shares to Rosneft when they leaving the venture. Every time they're looking for some sort of an excuse on how to do it and they're actually surrendering it to Rosneft, forfeiting their share. At some point, there's only two companies left, Gazpromneft and Rosneft. And actually, if my memory doesn't fail me, Gazpromneft was the last one to stay. However, Rosneft got itself its own venture in the Orinoco oil belt in the Carabobo block. I think it was 2017. And I think it was still the time when, despite the mounting sanctions pressure, you could still somehow work with Venezuela. The real sanctions came later. I think it was 2019 when the first Trump administration slapped real sanctions on Venezuela. And let me tell you something about how the heavy oil segment of the Venezuelan oil industry works. When you produce that ultra-heavy, ultra-viscous oil from the Orinoco oil belt, it still flows while it is at formation pressure and formation temperature. But once it's on the ground, it kind of congeals. So to make it flow again, you have to dilute it with straight round gasoline, naptha or something like that. A dilutant. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to move it around by pipeline. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to pour it into a tanker. Venezuela used to have a mighty oil refining industry. Back then, it could produce its own dilutants in quantum studies, albeit by 2017, that industry was heavily dilapidated, so Venezuela had to import that dilutant from somewhere else. Chevron had a license for doing so, but that wasn't enough. So, Venezuela struck a deal with Rosneft that Rosneft would supply dilutant to Venezuela, busting the sanctions imposed by the Trump administration. The outcome of that, by the way, was that Rosneft's trading arm, RN Trading, was sanctioned exactly for supplying dilutant to Venezuela.
Gabuev. Okay. And then as far as I understand Rosneft or companies that are connected to Rosneft, like the independent national company that belongs to Eduard Khudaynatov, former CEO of Rosneft and one of Sechin's lieutenants, was also involved in marketing PDVSA's oil on the global markets. But that was before 2022. I think that Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine has changed a lot and that there have been multiple sanctions slapped upon the Russian oil sector. Rosneft was designated only recently. We spoke about that in November. But then was Russia involved in helping Venezuela to market Russian oil and vice versa? Was Venezuela somehow involved in helping to market Russian oil?
Vakulenko. The bulk of Venezuelan oil at the moment is bought by China. In pretty much the same fashion as China buys Russian oil. In fact, Russia didn't invent this whole scheme with obfuscation, shadow fleet, and so on - that path was paved by Venezuela and Iran. Russia was involved in the Venezuelan oil trade before 2022, when it also served as one of the obfuscation agents and so on, Iran trading and all that. Since 2022, don't think Russia [has been] too heavily involved in that. So it wasn't official Russian involvement in Venezuelan oil trade, but there might have been some people with Slavic faces, characters and names helping before the war and after the war started.
Gabuev. I think that it's impossible to know what will happen next. Venezuela is a very complex and complicated country. There are multiple moving pieces and the news is coming basically every hour. But there is one concern in Russia that I've heard expressed by various people, including tycoon Oleg Deripaska, owner of Rusal, that since the U.S. is in Venezuela after oil, and if it is able to establish control over Venezuela's oil reaches, then the combined market power of U.S. shale oil producers plus Venezuela will give the U.S. the opportunity to dictate the prices and will wipe out Russia from the international market. This is based on the assumption that U.S. majors are actually lining up to go back into Venezuela. Well, Chevron is still there, but others are not. Do you see a scenario where that can materialize and when there will be a lot of cheap Venezuelan barrels that flood the global market together with American shale oil?
Vakulenko. I guess we need to take another look at those fabled 300 billion barrel reserves, which is huge. It's more than Saudi Arabia, it's four times bigger than the U.S. and Russia and so on. But the bulk of it is this physically present, difficult to deal with, highly expensive to extract, heavy oil; limited market for it as well. Another issue is, as mentioned before, that the Venezuelan oil industry at the moment is in a rather sad state. Most industry experts agree that you could grow Venezuelan oil production under the best of scenarios by something like 200-250,000 barrels per day by investing about $10 billion doors per annum. Trying to do more than that is difficult because you would run into capital constraints, technical constraints, equipment availability, work over team constraints, and so on and so forth. So no, it's not a situation where you can just open the tabs, lift sanctions, and suddenly the oil starts to flow. That's the consensus amongst oil punters, oil analysts, and oil companies. Again, much of that growth would come from high cost oil. Then potential developers of the oil, U.S. oil companies, are in an interesting conundrum. They're looking at a period of highly depressed oil prices. There were projections by JPMorgan that oil prices by 2027 could be in the 30s dollar [range per] barrel. That's definitely where Venezuelan oil is and economic. It's not particularly economic in the 50s either. They have other capital planning. They have a funnel of other projects that are projects in motion. You cannot just stop them and divert resources towards Venezuela. And again, Venezuela doesn't rank that highly in the corporate portfolios of Exxon, who has lots in Guyana, or Conoco and so on. So it would have to compete for Venezuelan capital and other resources for U.S. shale. U.S. shale is slowing down. U.S. shale isn't a cheap resource either, but U.S. sale is so much easier to work in above-ground terms. There is a huge availability of all the technical resources you need. You could hire teams, crews, contractors in the U.S. on a whim, and you don't need to busy yourself with arranging how those companies might get back into Venezuela. You don't need to necessarily ask Halliburton to move a crew from the U.S. to Venezuela. So the appetite for these projects amongst U.S. majors is probably not that high. This would mean that if they do Venezuela, they would have to sacrifice something else from their portfolio, and why would they do that if the project in Venezuela would be only marginally economic, if economic at all? They might devote some resources to it, but as I said, at best, Venezuelan oil production growth would be relatively slow. And if you look at a historic example, Iraq, it took 10 years for Iraqi production to get back to the level where it was before the 2003 Second Gulf War, and the Iraqi oil industry was in much better shape and had a much better resource base than Venezuela. So I really think that it's an ungrounded conspiracy theory that the U.S. would have that resource. And also, I think that's a bit of a magical thinking by politicians who just see a number, see a country that was doing oil production for 100 years, and believe that there might be something in it. So on its face, from 30,000 feet, it might be so. You look closer and well, there are lots of details and nuances that kind of negate the case.
Gabuev. This is super interesting and eye-opening. That's more or less the direction I suspected. But now I have, I think, a lot of data to prove the point that it's not as lucrative. I think that geopolitically, Venezuela was also just a big black hole for Russia. Russia wanted to establish a footprint. It was also willing to signal that if the U.S. can mess with Russia's so-called near abroad, that includes Ukraine and Georgia and all of the parts of the former Soviet Union, so Russia can also be present in the U.S. backyard, and here it had a like-minded authoritarian regime there. But this foothold, I think, apart from a market for Russian weapons, where Russia never got cash recently, but only was underwriting more loans, control over assets that were not so lucrative as you described...it didn't get that much of a real foothold, except for Venezuela's voice and Nicaragua's and Cuba's that it had anyway in the UN General Assembly. It had some intelligence capabilities and some military presence, but even these capabilities that Russia had on the ground didn't prevent Maduro's capture, which was spectacular. There was obviously a lot that we don't know about the collaboration on the inside and many other elements, but obviously that's not a very good advertisement for Russia as a patron saint for authoritarian regimes, just like Russia was not able to save Assad in his latest stage, although it was very much present and visible during the active phase of the Syrian civil war. Here, the Russian demonstration is much more mediocre, and all of this dark humor in the Russian segment of the internet about Americans teaching Russians how to really conduct special military operations, you know, a very quick in and out disposal of an unliked political leader, I think has a point. The problem is that where Russia really thrives is instability. And if the country is headed towards more political instability, Russia can definitely pull a lot of strings to make it a bigger problem in the Western Hemisphere and for the U.S. And that's where I think Russia is much more capable than in sustaining durable functioning regimes, particularly in the case of Venezuela, where the economy is deeply broken. But that's something that remains to be seen.
Vakulenko. So you think Russia might try to turn Venezuela into a poisoned chalice for the U.S.?
Gabuev. Depends on so many elements of how the Russia-U.S. relationship will go, and that's obviously contingent on the so-called peace process around Ukraine. But I think that definitely if the negotiations get derailed, Putin manages to get on Trump's bad side again, and there are more sanctions coming Russia's way, and the situation in Venezuela is unstable - and again, there are many ifs - I think that Russia could create some problems in Venezuela. I don't know how much they will transpire in the U.S. itself, but definitely it has tools to make life more difficult there.
Vakulenko. Interesting that Mr. Trump isn't trying to save Mr. Putin's ego from bruises. Because as we speak at the moment, the U.S. have just seized a tanker, a Venezuelan tanker that just flew the Russian flag recently. It reflagged itself from Guyana to Russia. Russia has issued a special notice that don't anybody dare touch this tanker, it's under Russian protection. Russia has sent its navy detachment to protect its tanker somewhere in the Northern Atlantic. It didn't stop a U.S. Coast Guard cruiser from stopping, boarding, and seizing the tanker. Of course, from the U.S.'s point of view, are that tanker is a stateless vessel. Indeed, that's how it works. You can't really change a ship's nationality in the high seas. At least you've got to demonstrate some links between the ship and the country. But it's a kind of in-your-face act. Do you have an idea how that might develop? Technically it's an act of war, if the tanker [is a] genuinely Russian vessel.
Gabuev. Yeah, I think that this is one of these really wild cards on the table. But I think that Trump has a track record of poking holes in this Russian projected overconfidence. The most famous example was in Iraq, where Wagner mercenaries were attacking positions of U.S. allies there, with courts, with the U.S. force present. The Americans just smashed the advancing Wagner columns, killing a lot of Russian mercenaries. And the Ministry of Defense of Russia immediately disowned them. I think that was a lesson that Russia doesn't want to repeat. So here we see certain amount of Russian bluff, and then Russian restraint where it was meeting a really serious U.S. commitment to size the vessel. So I think that deeper Russian involvement in Venezuela militarily on a state level is hard to conceive. I don't think that Russia has that many assets actually to bring to the table, and the demonstration of the U.S. flying its helicopters, knocking out many of the Venezuelan military facilities despite Russia supplying air defense systems and so on. Though again, I need to admit that we don't know much about the inside job, and probably great U.S. media outlets will portray this.
Vakulenko. You might have to have somebody pulling triggers on those air defense systems and we don't know if there were anybody willing to do so.
Gabuev. I completely agree. But this definitely will keep us busy and we will need to revisit this conversation at some point. Thank you so much, Sergey, and thanks for being with us.
Vakulenko. Thank you, Sasha.
