Venezuela Meets with Russia after Venezuela Reaches Rapprochement with US

Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez and Foreign Minister Félix Plasencia met Thursday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Turkey amid the crisis over the invasion of Ukraine. The meeting, whose talks have not yet been released to the public, comes just four days after a U.S. delegation visited Venezuela to begin an unexpected rapprochement between Washington and Caracas after three years without diplomatic relations and with strong tension over the sanctions imposed on the oil-producing nation.

On Monday, Nicolas Maduro and the White House confirmed that talks had begun last weekend, in what has been the highest-level visit by U.S. officials to Caracas in years. The Venezuelan leader described the talks as respectful and toned down his unlimited support for Vladimir Putin in the conflict, taking a more moderate stance that is closer to that of China and Cuba, countries that are advocating resolution of the crisis between Russia and Ukraine through dialogue.

As part of that shift in Venezuelan foreign policy, Rodríguez gave assurance that Venezuela “would never participate in the ranks of the war.” After meeting with representatives of the Biden administration, Maduro announced the return to negotiations with the opposition in Mexico, a repeated request from the United States. That dialogue has been frozen since last October, when Venezuela withdrew in protest of the extradition to the United States of businessman Alex Saab, accused of money laundering and identified as the alleged front man for highly-placed Venezuelan officials. Caracas also released two Americans, one of them a former manager of the Citgo refinery, arbitrarily detained for several years. These two developments demonstrated Maduro’s interest in keeping communication channels open by allowing certain concessions.

The United States is going to Venezuela amid the collapse of the world energy market in the wake of the Russian invasion, which has caused oil prices to skyrocket. The White House noted that “energy security” issues were included on the agenda of the meeting. This opens the possibility that Venezuela will once again become a supplier of crude oil to the United States, filling the small quota that Russia has provided, and whose oil has been banned by the United States and the United Kingdom. So far, Russia has not publicly reacted to these meetings, which represent a reversal in the geopolitics of the region and the conflict.