Russia once pushed for a bizarre 'Venezuela for Ukraine' deal, Trump ex-aide reveals. Watch
&imwidth=600&imheight=450&format=webp&quality=medium "Russia once pushed for a bizarre 'Venezuela for Ukraine' deal, Trump ex-aide reveals. Watch")
Fiona Hill Photograph: (AFP)
A resurfaced claim by Trump’s former Russia adviser suggests Moscow once floated a bizarre deal, ditch support for Venezuela in exchange for a free hand in Ukraine. The claim is going viral again after Maduro’s capture. Watch here
Russia, in recent days, has been very vocal about its support for Venezuela, especially since the United States, in a shock military raid, captured the South American nation's leader, Nicolas Maduro. However, as per Fiona Hill, Donald Trump's Former Deputy Assistant, Moscow once offered a “very strange swap arrangement between Venezuela and Ukraine”. Hill made the claim during a 2019 congressional hearing, and it is now once again going viral on social media.
What does a Venezuela-Ukraine swap mean?
According to Hill, during Trump's first tenure, the Russians hinted that they would be willing to pull their support for Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela for a price: A free hand in Ukraine.
During a Congressional hearing in 2019, she said that Russian officials repeatedly floated the idea of a "very strange swap arrangement between Venezuela and Ukraine".
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At the time, she said that Russia pushed the idea using articles in Russian media that referred to the Monroe Doctrine - the 1823 declaration by the fifth US president, James Monroe, asserting dominance in the Western Hemisphere. A core idea behind American foreign policy for centuries, the US foreign policy stated that Europe should stay out of the Americas, and in turn, the US would stay out of Europe. The same doctrine was invoked by Trump to justify the Venezuela operation.
Hill's comments have resurfaced again and are being widely shared on social media following the US stealth mission against Maduro. Talking to AP, she repeated her claims and said, “Before there was a ‘hint hint, nudge nudge, wink wink, how about doing a deal?’ But nobody (in the US) was interested then.” At the time, as per AP, Hill, who was then Trump's senior adviser on Russia and Europe, told Russian officials “Ukraine and Venezuela are not related to each other.”
