It's half a world away from Moscow, but Venezuela's presidential election could be a nail-biter for the Kremlin.
Russian President Vladimir Putin may be watching closely when Venezuelans vote in the July 28 election, which pits authoritarian Kremlin ally Nicolas Maduro against the leader of an opposition group advocating for democracy and capitalism.
Ahead of the vote, Maduro was trailing in opinion polls by a wide margin to Edmundo Gonzalez, a 74-year-old former diplomat, as Venezuelans tire of a leader who has presided over deepening poverty and economic troubles during his 11-year rule.
A Maduro exit would jeopardize Russia's power projection in Latin America at a time when Putin is seeking to rattle the United States in the Western Hemisphere amid increasing tension in Europe over Moscow's war against Ukraine, where U.S. weapons are crucial to Kyiv's defense and which the Kremlin casts as a battle against the West.
Venezuela has provided Russia with diplomatic support over its invasion of Ukraine, and Maduro has criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy while accusing Western countries of fueling the conflict.
Russia sent two warships to visit Venezuela earlier this month following a stop in Cuba, and Moscow also has warm ties with Nicaragua. The United States says such visits pose no threat, and they are widely seen as efforts to show force and emphasize that Russia has friends in the region.
"Much as Russia sees the United States encroaching on its own sphere of influence with NATO expansion in Eastern Europe, it sees the opportunity to do the exact same by fortifying partnerships with its historical and authoritarian allies in Latin America, namely Nicaragua, Cuba, and Venezuela," Henry Ziemer, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told RFE/RL.
Oil-producer Venezuela has been the most valuable of these alliances for Russia due to its resources and size, he said.
U.S. Ties
Gonzalez is the candidate of a united opposition whose driving force and power broker is Maria Corina Machado, whom Maduro barred from running in the presidential election after she overwhelmingly won the opposition primary.
Machado, 56, went to boarding school in the U.S. state of Massachusetts and attended the World Fellows Program at Yale University in 2009, one year before the late Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny. She periodically visited Washington until the government prohibited her from leaving Venezuela.
A free-market advocate, Machado has called for privatizing state assets and opening up Venezuela's economy to investment and has indicated she would would like to bolster ties with the United States. What role she might have in government if the opposition prevails is unclear.
Few opponents and observers believe Venezuela will hold a free and fair election or that Maduro will go quietly should he lose. In addition to barring Machado, he has curtailed the number of foreign election monitors. Earlier this month, he said Venezuela would plunge "into a bloodbath" if he loses.
"The problem isn't winning the election. It is getting Maduro to give up power. His regime has been signaling that they are not going to recognize the results," Armando Armas, an opposition member who said he was forced to leave Venezuela to avoid the risk of prison or assassination, told RFE/RL by phone.
Analysts say the socialist Maduro, 61, may fear arrest should he leave power. He has been accused of ordering the killings of opposition figures, torture, large-scale corruption, and drug trafficking, among other crimes. The International Criminal Court in The Hague has opened an investigation into his regime's violent crackdown on protesters in 2017.
Maduro "has every incentive to fight to remain in power regardless of the results," Will Freeman, an analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in a July 22 opinion article in the Los Angeles Times.
Thanks in part to a financial lifeline from Russia, he survived a "maximum pressure" campaign by the United States following the 2018 presidential election. Maduro claimed he won the election, which the opposition said was rigged. The United States was among many countries that did not recognize the declared result.
Then-U.S. President Donald Trump imposed far-reaching sanctions on Venezuela and its oil industry, a key source of government revenue, in an effort to push Maduro out. The United States and dozens of other countries recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido after he cited the constitution and claimed to be interim president in January 2019, but Maduro held on.
Russia has been helping Venezuela produce and export oil to circumvent the sanctions. Iran and China, members of what Western officials call an "axis of authoritarian states" that also includes Russia and Venezuela, have played a key role in the transportation and sale of the oil, Ziemer said.
Russia also reportedly sent up to 400 members of Wagner, a Russian mercenary force that is now under Defense Ministry oversight, to protect Maduro at the time. It also sent two nuclear-capable Tu-160 bombers to Venezuela.
Armas said Russia could potentially send people again to protect Maduro, but asserted that Moscow's main tool would be spreading disinformation and anti-opposition reports through Kremlin-controlled outlets RT and Sputnik.
This Time Different?
Analysts say it could prove more difficult for Maduro to hang on to power this time because the polling data is so conclusive.
"Erasing a 5- or 10-point defeat with fraud is one thing; a 30-point loss is another," Freeman wrote. "The bigger and more irrefutable the landslide, the greater the chances Maduro will lose control."
While Russia has not been an issue in an election widely cast as a struggle between authoritarian and democratic rule as well as well as socialism versus capitalism, a victorious opposition would likely eschew a cozy relationship with Moscow, given its support for Maduro.
"I think it would be a definite setback for Russia in the region and likely opens a window for greater U.S. engagement in Venezuela," Ziemer said.
Nonetheless, Russia would not retreat from the region, he said, but instead focus on ties with Havana and Managua, where its allies are more entrenched.
"It will lead to a doubling down of Russia's efforts to engage with Cuba and Nicaragua," Ziemer said.
