We are in the third decade of the 21st century, but – and despite living in a globalized, digital and technological world – humanity continues to suffer from the same old baseness, for example, the excessive ambition for power. The war unleashed by Putin against Ukraine is one more example of this, although within the West, under the pretext of the pandemic, frontal attacks against freedom are also being experienced. But that is the subject of another analysis.
Vladimir Putin has been supporting South American dictators for many years. He helps that, I am sure, is only strategic and eventual. Since those who start the race for total power have no loyalties, only circumstantial partners.
And it is that, since the beginning of the 21st century, Russia, with the desire to expand its sphere of geopolitical influence, has signed some 200 cooperation agreements (some technological and others military) with South American and Caribbean countries. This group includes: Brazil (2004), Peru (2004), Argentina (2004), Chile (2004), Venezuela (2009) and Bolivia (2009). As for Cuba ―apart from forgiving 90% of the 35 billion dollars in debt from the Soviet era―, it maintains the supply of spare parts for Army vehicles and weapons.
On August 28, 2013, after having visited Nicaragua and Cuba, the Russian Navy arrived in Venezuela. Moscow, a 11,500-ton missile ship with a total length of 186 meters, was the first of four ships to arrive at the port of Guaria, in the state of Vargas.
During the visit of the Russian sailors, Nicolás Maduro said the following:
Commander Chavez and President Vladimir Putin managed to build a deep strategic alliance between Venezuela and Russia. It is necessary to have more and more moral power, political power, military power; not to go and conquer the peoples of the world, it is so that our right to live, to be, to be in peace is respected.
It should be remembered that this was not the first rapprochement between the Russian and Venezuelan armed forces. Well, in 2011, specifically, in September, several Russian warships, including the nuclear cruiser Piotr Veliki (Peter the Great), entered the territorial waters of Venezuela to participate in joint naval exercises.
In October 2013, a time when relations between Colombia and Venezuela were tense, two Russian Tu-160 bombers entered Colombian airspace from Venezuela.
In 2018, those same planes landed at the Maiquetía Simón Bolívar International Airport, the most important in Venezuela. Vladímir Padrino López, Minister of Defense of the Chavista dictatorship, at the time of receiving with honors the one hundred Russian pilots who arrived along with the bombers, stated the following: «Just as we are cooperating in different areas of the development of our peoples. We are also preparing to defend Venezuela to the last inch if necessary.
For all of the above, it should not surprise us that the governments of Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba remain totally silent about the invasion. Nor should we be surprised by the ambiguous and lukewarm pronouncements of Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Ecuador and Bolivia. In fact, only Colombia, Uruguay and Chile were categorical in their rejection.
In this regard, the Bolivian jurist, Carlos Sánchez Berzaín, in an interview with the EVTV program La Mañana, said:
What happens with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine corresponds to the definition of the crime of aggression, which is a concept established by international law determined in the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals after World War II, ratified by the United Nations and in the Article 5 of the Rome Statute. The dictatorships of 21st century socialism or Castrochavism in the Americas are part of the non-democratic system that threatens democracy and peace, now structured worldwide with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In the case of Russia’s war of invasion against Ukraine, the regimes of Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua are and should be considered unconditional allies of Russian crimes because by backing you and disguising them with nationalist narratives they are only repeating the cover-up of their own crimes against humanity that with State terrorism they have committed years ago against their peoples.
Finally, if the Russian invasion remains unpunished, the effects on the region will be devastating. Since it will strengthen the narco-states born in the Sao Paulo Forum. With which, the task, for those of us who fight for the freedom of our countries, will be much more difficult.
