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Putin taunts Trump: 400 Russian military contractors sent to Venezuela in support of Maduro - The Chinese are coming next.
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I stated the other day specifically that this was going to happen, and that both Russia and China would show up right on our doorstep, due to Trump's idiocy.
[link to www.washingtontimes.com (secure)] - Russia is playing a high-stakes game in the mounting crisis in Venezuela, where socialist President Nicolas Maduro has been mortgaging part of the country’s oil resources in exchange for financial and military support from Moscow.
Latin America is far from Russia, and Venezuela is impoverished, surrounded by hostile neighbors and squarely in the crosshairs of the Trump administration. But for a variety of reasons, the government of President Vladimir Putin sees in Caracas an ally worth cultivating.
The Kremlin has managed to maintain a decades-long relationship with Cuba’s communist regime, whose intelligence services have worked closely with Russian advisers to make inroads into Venezuela’s military and its reserve-rich oil sector. The U.S. estimates Russia’s total investment in Venezuela to be $30 billion.
Under anti-U.S. populist leader Hugo Chavez, Mr. Maduro’s late predecessor and political mentor, Russia became one of Venezuela’s strongest allies with economic ties including crude oil, loans and arms sales.
That helps explain why Moscow has emerged as one of Mr. Maduro’s most vocal defenders and one of the biggest critics of the pressure campaign waged by Washington and a number of countries in Latin America.
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