{"id":44715,"date":"2019-03-24T06:45:55","date_gmt":"2019-03-24T11:45:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=44715"},"modified":"2019-03-24T06:45:59","modified_gmt":"2019-03-24T11:45:59","slug":"russia-gives-us-red-line-on-venezuela","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=44715","title":{"rendered":"Russia Gives US Red Line on Venezuela"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.strategic-culture.org\/images\/news\/2019\/03\/22\/or-42412.jpg?106243\" alt=\"Russia Gives US Red Line on Venezuela\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.strategic-culture.org\/news\/2019\/03\/22\/russia-gives-us-red-line-venezuela.html\">Russia Gives US Red Line on Venezuela<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At a high-level meeting in Rome this week, it seems that Russia reiterated a grave warning to the US \u2013 Moscow will not tolerate American military intervention to topple the Venezuelan government with whom it is allied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Meanwhile, back in Washington DC, President Donald Trump was again&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.france24.com\/en\/20190320-trump-reaffirms-us-considering-all-options-venezuela\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">bragging<\/a>&nbsp;that the military option was still on the table, in his press conference with Brazilian counterpart Jair Bolsonaro. Trump is bluffing or not yet up to speed with being apprised of Russia\u2019s red line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-venezuela-politics-usa-russia\/u-s-russia-talks-on-venezuela-stall-over-role-of-maduro-idUSKCN1R022B\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">meeting<\/a>&nbsp;in the Italian capital between US \u201cspecial envoy\u201d on Venezuelan affairs Elliot Abrams and Russia\u2019s deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov had an air of urgency in its arrangement. The US State Department&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rferl.org\/a\/us-envoy-for-venezuela-to-meet-with-russian-deputy-fm\/29825365.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">announced<\/a>&nbsp;the t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate only three days beforehand. The two officials also reportedly held their two-hour discussions in a Rome hotel, a venue indicating ad hoc arrangement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abrams is no ordinary diplomat. He is a regime-change specialist with a criminal record for sponsoring terrorist operations, specifically the infamous Iran-Contra affair to destabilize Nicaragua during the 1980s. His appointment by President Trump to the \u201cVenezuela file\u201d only underscores the serious intent in Washington for regime change in Caracas. Whether it gets away with that intent is another matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Moscow\u2019s interlocutor, Sergei Ryabkov, is known to not mince his words, having earlier castigated Washington for seeking global military domination. He calls a spade a spade, and presumably a criminal a criminal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The encounter in Rome this week was described as \u201cfrank\u201d and \u201cserious\u201d \u2013 which is diplomatic code for a blazing exchange. The timing comes at a high-stakes moment, after Venezuela having been thrown into chaos last week from civilian power blackouts that many observers, including the Kremlin, blame on American cyber sabotage. The power grid outage followed a failed attempt by Washington to stage a provocation with the Venezuelan military over humanitarian aid deliveries last month from neighboring Colombia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&nbsp;\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Russia Gives US Red Line on Venezuela At a high-level meeting in Rome this week, it seems that Russia reiterated a grave warning to the US \u2013 Moscow will not tolerate American military intervention to topple the Venezuelan government with whom it is allied. Meanwhile, back in Washington DC, President Donald Trump was again&nbsp;bragging&nbsp;that the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[16113,2422,8203,827,851,865],"class_list":["post-44715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-finian-cunningham","tag-nicolas-maduro","tag-strategic-culture-foundation","tag-united-states","tag-venezuela","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44715"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44715\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44716,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44715\/revisions\/44716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}