How the ousting of Russia’s ally Maduro benefits Moscow

Russia’s reaction to the ousting of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has been cautious, with Moscow weighing up the potential geopolitical benefits and opportunities of the U.S.’ unilateral action against the loss of an important regional ally in Latin America.

Moscow initially condemned U.S. strikes on Venezuela on Saturday, and the subsequent capture of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.

Russia’s foreign ministry decried the U.S.’ “aggressive actions,” saying they constituted “an unacceptable infringement on the sovereignty of an independent state.” But the Kremlin has not issued an official response on the ousting, nor has Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Maduro was an ally of President Putin and Venezuela has long-standing ties with Russia; Caracas backed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the two countries shared energy ties and military cooperation. The allies also had a shared interest in counteracting the U.S.’ geopolitical, military and economic influence in the region.

Still, Maduro’s removal is not all bad news for Russia, and Moscow is likely to be looking at ways it can leverage the crisis in Venezuela to its own benefit.

For a start, the Venezuela crisis comes at a delicate moment in Moscow’s own relations with Washington. It’s likely to be wary of burning bridges with the White House at a time when it’s trying to curry favor with the administration to get the most favorable terms from a prospective Ukraine peace deal.

But events in Venezuela provide a welcome distraction on that front, with Russia benefiting from any relaxation of efforts — or pressure — to reach a peace deal with Ukraine, or to enter into a ceasefire as part of any agreement.

While Russian forces are seen to have an advantage on the battlefield, not least in terms of manpower, and are making incremental progress in eastern Ukraine, a ceasefire is not seen to be in Russia’s interests.

“The Kremlin’s response to the U.S. operation in Venezuela has been boilerplate thus far,” analysts at the Institute for the Study of War, noted Sunday, adding that the Kremlin “will likely have to balance its responses between maintaining its credibility as a partner to other states with its continued efforts to cater to the Trump administration.”

Analysts have also expressed concern that Trump’s capture of Maduro, and the criminal charges levelled against him, could give Russia carte blanche to do the same to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who Moscow frequently describes as a “criminal,” without presenting evidence to back up its accusations.

“He [Trump] is giving Putin permission to go as far as he wants with Zelenskyy,” Sarah Lenti, political consultant and former director on the National Security Council at the White House, told CNBC Monday.

“The president saying Maduro was a criminal, therefore he had the right to take [and] capture him. And we know that President Putin has often called Zelenskyy, wrongly, I believe, a criminal. And so he’s setting a precedent and saying that it’s ok for countries to go against the political sovereignty of another nation,” she said in comments to CNBC’s “Europe Early Edition.”

“I think this is setting a very bad precedent for countries that China and Russia are looking to infringe upon, whether that’s Taiwan or whether it’s Ukraine,” Lenti added.

On an ideological level, Trump’s intervention in Venezuela and the foreign policy stance underpinning it — a desire to reassert the U.S.’ power and dominance in the Western Hemisphere — chimes with Russia.

Putin is also widely seen as wanting to re-establish Russia’s sphere of influence in Europe and Central Asia, which was lost following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, an event that Putin described as the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century.

There has been speculation that Trump’s newfound focus on re-establishing American hegemony in the West could allow Russia to do the same in its own backyard. But several analysts commented to CNBC that the U.S.’ intervention in Venezuela showed countries like Russia and Iran that Trump was ready to act if it was deemed to be in the U.S.’ interests.

“What he is doing in Venezuela is definitely going to be seen and heard very clearly in Iran, and in Russia,” Amrita Sen, founder of Energy Aspects, told CNBC Monday,

“Whether that’s in terms of needing to take Trump seriously, or in terms of, ‘Don’t dismiss it when he says, ‘I am going to be doing X,’ and I think that’s something that world leaders will be very careful about,” she told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe.”

Meanwhile, Marko Papic, strategist at BCA Research, argued that Russia had no bargaining power with the U.S. when it came to allies like Venezuela.

“If the U.S. gets a free rein in the sphere of influence, do other great powers get a free rein in theirs? The answer is ‘no.’ There is nothing that Russia could have given America in Venezuela … There was no need for any kind of a bargain between Russia and the U.S. [as] the U.S. has free rein in its Western hemisphere,” he noted.

Analysts are keen to stress that Maduro’s ousting won’t be actively welcomed in Moscow, as it removes an important ally and a bulwark against U.S. influence and aspirations in Latin America.

“With Maduro’s fall, another Russian client state bites the dust, reducing the value of a Kremlin security guarantee to slightly better than zero,” Tina Fordham, founder of Fordham Global Insight, stated in analysis on Monday.

“To make matters worse from the Kremlin’s perspective, the U.S. operation effortlessly cut through the much-vaunted S-300 Russian air defence systems that had been installed in Venezuela, after having also failed to deliver air protection in Syria and Iran,” she noted.