Though US external pressures on the Maduro regime in Caracas appear to have calmed for the moment, with President Trump reportedly “bored” with pursuing regime change in a complicated political climate that’s “low-hanging fruit” for American foreign policy goals, continued Russian military involvement there could again spark ratcheting tensions.
On Monday a large Russian air force transport plane touched down in Caracas (specifically an Ilyushin IL-62), as first noticed by the monitoring website Flight Radar 24, and now confirmed by Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov on Tuesday, according to the Interfax news agency. Ryabkov described the deployment’s purpose as to service Russian military equipment already in the country, as reported by Reuters.
Just three months ago a similar Russian air force plane arrival resulted in condemnations out of the White House. At that time Trump said that “Russia has to get out” amid US efforts to back opposition leader Juan Guaido. And John Bolton went further in essentially invoking the 19th century Monroe doctrine, saying at the time: “We strongly caution actors external to the Western Hemisphere against deploying military assets to Venezuela, or elsewhere in the Hemisphere, with the intent of establishing or expanding military operations” comments which came in late March .
Given Trump’s latest expressed desire to get out of the regime change business in Venezuela, will Monday’s Russian jet landing in Caracas be met with silence from the White House?
Likely sensing Trump’s preference for deescalation, Moscow appears to be taking pains to reassure Washington there’s nothing at all to worry about. “From all points of view this cooperation is transparent,” Deputy FM Ryabkov said. “It does not have any elements of detribalization of the region or any other situation.”
This further comes amid reports that Russia has canceled major military contracts with the Maduro government, fearing the extreme debt-laden country will never be able to pay back its commitments.
But more crucial is the interesting timing, given that also on Monday the Russian warship Admiral Gorshkov, armed with Kalibr missiles, entered the port of Havana in an official Russian Navy visit to Cuba. In statements that coincided with the ship’s arrival, Deputy FM Ryabkov went so far as to invoke the Cuban Missile Crisis while condemning US weapons systems build-up in Europe.
“We could find ourselves in a situation where we have a rocket crisis close not just to the crisis of the 1980s but close to the Caribbean crisis,” Ryabkov said while using the standard Russian term for the Cuban missile crisis.
Apparently Moscow wanted to provide Washington with a nice easy-to-understand visual of its warnings of a potential future escalating crisis in the form of its warship entering Cuban waters, which international reporters and cameras were on hand to capture.
So now, a Russian frigate and accompanying naval vessels in Cuba, and a Russian military jet in Caracas… John Bolton must be having a conniption fit.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Lhybmi Tyler Durden