Putin and Maduro in the Kremlin in May 2025. Photo: kremlin.ru
People have forgotten how to read letters. But the author is also to blame: it needs to be explained.
The Maduro case has several components, and observers' attitudes towards them largely depend on exogenous factors.
1. For US citizens, for whom the suffering of Venezuelans under Maduro's dictatorship (eight million fled the country) is secondary — and that's normal, — they are more concerned about another authoritarian decision by Trump, who once again bypassed Congress and used the Monroe Doctrine of the 19th century in his rhetoric. Not to mention that the operation in Caracas is funded by taxpayers' money. The argument that Venezuelan oil will cover the costs is untenable: it will take years to restore the Venezuelan oil industry.
2. For people who lived under dictatorship, whose friends were sent to camps, and some were killed or are being slowly killed, and who were forced to become political exiles (like the author of these lines), deprived of means, property, and Homeland, Maduro's arrest is evidence that not all dictators die in their beds: some face punishment, and the light at the end of the tunnel may shine for them too.
3. Moreover, it's a slap in the face to Putin. Maduro's regime would not have survived on its own without the support of the Cuban KGB and Cuban military (who, for example, handled food distribution), as well as active assistance from Russia and China — see Anne Applebaum, Autocracy, Inc., Ch. 2 & Ch. 5.
4. For many, the Maduro case is a violation of international law. I believe it's even worse: the world has returned to the 1930s, to the times of the impotent League of Nations (like the UN now) and the triumph of bloody dictatorships of Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini.
BUT: what international law can be discussed after four (almost) years of war in Eastern Europe?
As noted by the writer, former columnist NT Viktor Shenderovich*, “this loud lament about lost virginity occurs, it should be noted, in the middle of a brothel: there has long been no international law on the planet.”
Every day Putin bombs Ukrainian cities. Every day he kills children. The latest was in Kharkiv: three-year-old Maxim and his 28-year-old mother were killed. Someone wrote on X:
“...The little boy who was pulled from the rubble in Kharkiv was three years old, he was born during the war, lived during the war all his short life, and the Russians killed him today with an 'Iskander'... Curse you...”
Killed by a Russian missile in Kharkiv, three-year-old Maxim and his mother Anastasia. Photo: X / @BohuslavskaKate
And all this happens in front of and, excuse me, with the connivance of the Western world and the apologists of international law. Where is this law? What illusions do you live by if you don't see what is happening on the other side of the pond, as the US president calls the Atlantic Ocean?
5. The risks are colossal. What will happen in Venezuela is not obvious. Remember Iraq, Libya, Lebanon. Regime change there by external actors led to many thousands and tens of thousands of victims. However, unlike these countries, Venezuela does not have a religious divide like in Iraq and Lebanon, there are no strong external players like Syria and Iran in Lebanon, and there is, unlike Iraq and Libya, experience of democratic governance (17 years of Venezuelan patriarchy before Chavez) and fair elections (even during early Chavez). Finally, Venezuela has, at least in the framework, democratic institutions, which Iraq did not have, not to mention Libya.
6. Does the Maduro case mean that tomorrow China will seize Taiwan, and Putin will try to arrest Zelensky or attack Latvia? And what, before Maduro's arrest, were these threats not present? In February 2022, hundreds of Putin's agents roamed Kyiv and its surroundings in search of the Ukrainian president to kill him or take him to Russia, and put Yanukovych or Medvedchuk in his place.
Perhaps you haven't noticed, but might over right has been a reality in Europe for at least four years.
In this sense, the operation in Caracas changes little. But Putin once again remembered how Gaddafi ended.
7. Western democracies should have woken up on February 24, 2022. However, reading today the texts of The New York Times, in which Maduro is still called president, although he lost the 2024 elections with a bang (the opposition candidate gained plus-minus 70% of the votes) and remained in office illegally, or, even worse, is called a leader (“Venezuelans rush to buy groceries as the United States captured their leader”), you realize that internal political love/hate still hinders a sober view of the world. Everything has already happened. The arrest of Maduro and the Attorney General of Venezuela, who is also the dictator's wife, is not the worst thing that has happened over these four years.
* Evgenia Albats, Viktor Shenderovich are declared "foreign agents" in Russia.