I am surprised the US and Russia can't agree on a solution. I would like to know who is being unreasonable here. Russia can't think we are going to allow them to control the oil there. So lets just fix this for the people.
Russia can meddle but things have not gone well for them there in the past. They in fact have already been given a golden opportunity to control the oil there in the past. Rosneft, the big state owned russian petro company has put massive, massive amounts of money into VZ in co-development plans/schemes with Hugo/Maduro. In the end though, they have not made a dime and have lost billions and billions there. The age-old latin American enemy brought the whole thing down- ie. internal corruption, not geopolitics. The Venezuelans diverted most of the russian funds for oil development off to their cronies. The fact that they did not output any russian co-produced oil is not a good sign. Meanwhile, the Ruskies are first and foremost pissed at the U.S for allegedly meddling in the EU to stop members from purchasing Russian natural gas. Unlike the VZ fiasco, that is an area where they are making big bucks and have growth opportunities but the U.S is messing that up, not only by meddling but also by offering competing product at a better and more stable price on the market. The Ruskies are just trying to create enough pain in VZ for the Americans to cut them a little more slack in Europe. They have already had enough pain and circling of the toilet bowl themselves in VZ. Methinks.
I believe Russia has miscalculated. What is likely to happen is the US sending defensive missile batteries to Poland. We don't like Russians in the Western Hemisphere in any significant numbers.
Venezuela's foreign minister meeting with Assad. Not good. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/05/sho...-in-venezuela-enters-dangerous-new-phase.html
Shamelessly quoting myself above. Meanwhile in today's news: Venezuela's foreign minister meeting with Assad. Not good. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/05/sho...-in-venezuela-enters-dangerous-new-phase.html
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics-erikprince-exclusi-idUSKCN1S608F Exclusive - Blackwater founder’s latest sales pitch: mercenaries for Venezuela WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Erik Prince - the founder of the controversial private security firm Blackwater and a prominent supporter of U.S. President Donald Trump - has been pushing a plan to deploy a private army to help topple Venezuela’s socialist president, Nicolas Maduro, four sources with knowledge of the effort told Reuters. Over the last several months, the sources said, Prince has sought investment and political support for such an operation from influential Trump supporters and wealthy Venezuelan exiles. In private meetings in the United States and Europe, Prince sketched out a plan to field up to 5,000 soldiers-for-hire on behalf of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, according to two sources with direct knowledge of Prince’s pitch. One source said Prince has conducted meetings about the issue as recently as mid-April. White House National Security Council spokesman Garrett Marquis declined to comment when asked whether Prince had proposed his plan to the government and whether it would be considered. A person familiar with the administration’s thinking said the White House would not support such a plan. Venezuela opposition officials have not discussed security operations with Prince, said Guaido spokesman Edward Rodriguez, who did not answer additional questions from Reuters. The Maduro government did not respond to a request for comment. Some U.S. and Venezuelan security experts, told of the plan by Reuters, called it politically far-fetched and potentially dangerous because it could set off a civil war. A Venezuelan exile close to the opposition agreed but said private contractors might prove useful, in the event Maduro’s government collapses, by providing security for a new administration in the aftermath. A spokesman for Prince, Marc Cohen, said this month that Prince “has no plans to operate or implement an operation in Venezuela” and declined to answer further questions. Lital Leshem - the director of investor relations at Prince’s private equity firm, Frontier Resource Group - earlier confirmed Prince’s interest in Venezuela security operations. “He does have a solution for Venezuela, just as he has a solution for many other places,” she said, declining to elaborate on his proposal. The two sources with direct knowledge of Prince’s pitch said it calls for starting with intelligence operations and later deploying 4,000 to 5,000 soldiers-for-hire from Colombia and other Latin American nations to conduct combat and stabilization operations. ‘DYNAMIC EVENT’ For Prince, the unlikely gambit represents the latest effort in a long campaign to privatize warfare. The wealthy son of an auto-parts tycoon has fielded private security contractors in conflict zones from Central Asia to Africa to the Middle East. One of Prince’s key arguments, one source said, is that Venezuela needs what Prince calls a “dynamic event” to break the stalemate that has existed since January, when Guaido - the head of Venezuela’s National Assembly - declared Maduro’s 2018 re-election illegitimate and invoked the constitution to assume the interim presidency. Maduro has denounced Guaido, who has been backed by most western nations, as a U.S. puppet who is seeking to foment a coup. Key government institutions – including the military – have not shifted their loyalty to Guaido despite increasing international pressure from sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies. Guaido has stressed that he wants a peaceful resolution, and Latin American governments recognizing his authority have urged against outside military action. Senior U.S. officials, without ruling out armed intervention, have also emphasized economic and diplomatic measures to pressure Maduro. CLOSE TIES TO TRUMP Prince was a pioneer in private military contracting during the Iraq war, when the U.S. government hired Blackwater primarily to provide security for State Department operations there. In 2007, Blackwater employees shot and killed 17 Iraqi civilians at Nisour Square in Baghdad, sparking international outrage. One of the Blackwater employees involved was convicted of murder in December and three others have been convicted of manslaughter. Slideshow (2 Images) Prince renamed the Blackwater security company and sold it in 2010, but he recently opened a company called Blackwater USA, which sells ammunition, silencers and knives. Over the past two years, he has led an unsuccessful campaign to convince the Trump administration to replace U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan with security contractors. Since 2014, Prince has run the Hong Kong-based Frontier Services Group, which has close ties to the state-owned Chinese investment company CITIC and helps Chinese firms operating in Africa with security, aviation and logistics services. Prince donated $100,000 to a political action committee that supported Trump’s election. His sister, Betsy DeVos, is the administration’s education secretary. Prince’s role in Trump’s campaign was highlighted in the report by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller, released this month, on alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russian efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election. The report outlined how Prince financed an effort to authenticate purported Hillary Clinton emails and how in 2016 he met in the Seychelles islands, off east Africa, with a wealthy Russian financial official on behalf of Trump’s presidential transition team. Prince spokesman Cohen declined to comment on the Mueller report. TARGETING FROZEN ASSETS The two sources with direct knowledge of Prince’s Venezuela plan said he is seeking $40 million from private investors. He also aims to get funding from the billions of dollars in Venezuelan assets that have been seized by governments around the world imposing sanctions on the OPEC nation, a major oil exporter. It’s unclear, however, how the Venezuelan opposition could legally access those assets. Prince told people in pitch meetings, the sources said, that he believes that Guaido has the authority to form his own military force because he has been recognized internationally as Venezuela’s rightful leader. Prince envisions a force made up of “Peruvians, Ecuadoreans, Colombians, Spanish speakers,” one of the sources said, adding that Prince argued that such soldiers would be more politically palatable than American contractors. (This story has been refiled to fix typo in the first paragraph.) Reporting By Aram Roston and Matt Spetalnick; Editing by Kieran Murray and Brian Thevenot
It's what is looks like when you try to fight a revolution where only the government has guns. The British tried ride out to Lexington and Concord to take the powder houses from the Massachusetts colonists. Didn't go all that well for them.