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Chapter 71: Venezuela: The Praetorian Guard: Russia's Role as Regime Protector

The air in Caracas on January 23, 2019, was a shimmering, electric thing, thick with humidity and revolutionary hope. The Francisco de Miranda avenue had become a river of people, a solid mass of humanity flowing for miles under a punishing sun, their white and yellow shirts a defiant answer to the red of the regime. From the rooftops, the sound was not a chant, but a single, physical roar that vibrated through the concrete of the city: "¡Fuera Maduro!" Out with Maduro. It was the sound of a nation pushed past its breaking point. On a hastily erected stage, Juan Guaidó, the young, almost boyish leader of the National Assembly, seemed to draw power from the crowd. He raised his right hand, his voice cracking but resolute, and swore a public oath to uphold the constitution as the legitimate interim president of the Republic. The roar that followed was an explosion, a sound so cathartic and full of desperate belief it seemed capable of blasting the doors off the presidential palace.

Within minutes, the wave broke internationally. First a tweet from the White House, then official statements from Canada, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Germany. A cascade of recognitions that solidified the reality the crowd was trying to will into being. It felt like the final, decisive move in a global chess match. The end seemed not just possible, but imminent, a matter of hours, perhaps a day.

Miles away, inside the cold, sterile confines of the Miraflores presidential palace, the sound of the crowd was a muffled, constant threat, like the sea trying to break down a wall. The atmosphere was one of suffocating panic. Nicolás Maduro, his face pale and slick with sweat under the television lights for a broadcast no one was watching, conferred with his hollow-eyed inner circle. The Minister of Defense, Vladimir Padrino López, shifted his weight from foot to foot, his face an unreadable mask, but his silence was a language of its own. He, like every general in the high command, was fielding frantic, clandestine phone calls, weighing loyalties against survival. The men from the Cuban Directorate of Intelligence, the G2, who had for years formed the true backbone of Maduro’s security state, were ruthlessly pragmatic. They were the ones talking about flight plans, about asylum, about a dignified exit to Havana or Istanbul. They could feel the foundation cracking. The specter of Gaddafi’s end, pulled from a sewer pipe and executed by a mob, haunted the gilded room.

Then, a different kind of call came. Not a call for surrender, but a call for confirmation. An asset at Simón Bolívar International Airport reported that a non-commercial, heavy transport aircraft had entered Venezuelan airspace, its transponder identifying it as Russian Air Force. Its flight path was a straight, unwavering line from Moscow.

It was not a private jet for an escape, but a vast Ilyushin Il-62, and its landing on the military runway had the heavy, unarguable thud of geopolitical significance. It taxied to a secure section of the airbase, far from any public view, surrounded by the Venezuelan National Guard’s elite counterintelligence unit. Down the ramp came not diplomats, but approximately 100 men. They moved with a discipline that was alien to the local troops. Grim-faced, impassive, they were clad in sterile, sand-colored fatigues with no insignia, but they carried brand-new Kalashnikov rifles and were a study in professional menace. They were, the government would later claim, "technical specialists." But in the palace, a single name was whispered with a mixture of terror and relief. They were Wagner.

They were not dispatched to the streets to face the tide of protestors; they were far too valuable for that. Instead, in a quiet, deliberate display of power, they were trucked to a handful of key locations, most importantly the immediate perimeter of the presidential palace itself. Their presence was a carefully managed "leak" to the military intelligence services. The message was not for the crowd; it was for the wavering generals in their headquarters across the city. It was a cold, silent declaration sent directly from Moscow: He is ours. The game has changed. Putin is now a player at the table, and he has placed his own men on the board as his stake. Do not touch our king. Choose your side carefully, for your choice is now final.

It was enough. The clandestine calls between army bases went silent. The momentum for a coup, which had been gathering for hours, dissipated as if it had never existed. Padrino López appeared on state television, his face once again a mask, but this time of unwavering loyalty, condemning the "imperialist-backed" coup attempt. The brief, exhilarating window where a popular uprising felt on the verge of victory slammed shut. Putin had sent his Praetorian Guard. He had placed his finger on the scale, and a dying regime had been given a new, violent, and indefinite life.

The Discourse 71: A Toolkit for Regime Survival

71.1 Military Intervention as Coup-Proofing
Russia’s primary role in Venezuela has been to act as the ultimate guarantor of the Maduro regime's survival against internal and external threats, a function it fulfilled decisively in January 2019. At the moment of the regime’s greatest vulnerability, as mass protests and a U.S.-backed political challenge from Juan Guaidó seemed poised to topple it, Russia intervened directly. The arrival of approximately 100 Russian military personnel, widely identified by international intelligence agencies as private military contractors from the state-linked Wagner Group, was a pivotal event. While their official purpose was servicing pre-existing Russian arms contracts—like the S-300 air defense system—their true mission, according to security sources on the ground, was to provide a hardened layer of "close protection" for Maduro. Their function was not to fight the population, but to neutralize the risk of a palace coup. By surrounding Maduro with a loyal foreign Praetorian Guard, Moscow sent an unambiguous signal to Venezuela's wavering military high command that any move against Maduro would now be a move against the Kremlin itself. This tactic of using deniable but lethal state-backed mercenaries for "coup-proofing" is a core component of Russia’s hybrid warfare model, seen also in Syria and parts of Africa. It proved highly effective in Venezuela, stabilizing the regime at a minimal financial and political cost and without the repercussions of a formal Russian military deployment.

71.2 The Economic Lifeline: Rosneft's Sanctions Busting
Behind the overt military support was an even more critical, covert economic lifeline. As ever-tightening U.S. sanctions crippled Venezuela’s state oil company, PDVSA, and cut it off from Western markets, the Russian state-owned energy giant, Rosneft, stepped in as the regime’s financial savior. From 2019 to early 2020, Rosneft became the primary trader and intermediary for Venezuelan crude oil, at its peak handling over two-thirds of the country's oil exports and keeping the Maduro government solvent. Rosneft orchestrated a sophisticated global sanctions-evasion operation. This involved deploying a "ghost fleet" of oil tankers that routinely switched off their AIS transponders to mask their origins and destinations, as well as conducting complex, hard-to-track ship-to-ship transfers of crude in neutral waters off the coasts of Africa and in the Caribbean. Rosneft’s role as the central hub of this operation was so crucial to the regime’s financial survival that in February 2020, the U.S. Treasury Department leveled direct sanctions against Rosneft Trading S.A., its Swiss-based subsidiary, for "propping up the dictatorial Maduro regime." In a classic Russian shell game, just a month later Rosneft announced it was ceasing operations in Venezuela and had sold all its assets to a newly created, unnamed holding company wholly owned by the Russian government. The Kremlin thus insulated its flagship national energy company while ensuring the sanctions-busting mechanism could continue uninterrupted under a new, more opaque name.

71.3 The Diplomatic Shield
In perfect concert with its military and economic support, Russia provided Venezuela with an indispensable diplomatic shield at the United Nations and other international forums. Working in tandem with China, Russia consistently used its veto power as a permanent member of the Security Council to block any U.S.-led efforts to impose punitive resolutions, to formally delegitimize the Maduro regime, or to authorize any form of international intervention. A textbook example occurred on February 28, 2019, at the absolute height of the political crisis. Russia and China cast a double veto against a U.S.-drafted UN Security Council resolution that specifically called for free and fair presidential elections and demanded unhindered access for international humanitarian aid. Russia’s ambassador, Vasily Nebenzya, declared the resolution a cynical pretext for "regime change." This diplomatic protection proved essential. It neutralized international pressure, sowed division among Western allies, and allowed the Maduro regime to maintain its crucial, albeit contested, claim to legal state sovereignty, even as it was being formally indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice as a narco-terrorist organization. This combined toolkit—deniable military muscle, sophisticated sanctions evasion, and a diplomatic iron dome—represents a complete survival package for allied autocracies worldwide.