Russia's dangerous new ploy: US trading Ukraine for Venezuela

[Celerity]

Russia is peddling a dangerous new narrative: Washington should trade Ukraine for Venezuela.

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/445488-russias-dangerous-new-ploy-us-trading-ukraine-for-venezuela

This is Moscow’s most recent front in its war against Ukraine. Wolodymyr Zelenskii’s inauguration as Ukraine’s new president has not stopped Russia’s attempts to destroy Ukraine’s independence, democracy and integrity. Now it’s playing out in Washington.

The narrative goes that Washington should give Moscow a free hand in Ukraine — in return for Moscow supposedly giving Washington a free hand to unseat Venezuela’s venal and criminal Maduro regime. This narrative also argues that Washington should simply extend the New START Treaty for five years, while resuming arms control talks with Moscow.

The Russian narrative contends that President Trump, believing himself exonerated by the Mueller report, can now freely improve relations with Moscow. Not coincidentally Vladimir Putin shares this narrative. Therefore, Washington should seek to improve these relations and retrieve them from the supposedly dangerous impasse into which they had fallen. Allegedly, only churlish members of the media, unregenerate Russophobes and foreign policy commentators oppose this development.

Unfortunately, this approach is morally indefensible and strategically disastrous. Let us remember that Russia’s armies (including so-called separatists, who are really Moscow’s auxiliaries in Ukraine) invaded the Crimea and the Donbas and committed the most naked aggression since Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990. Putin would also undoubtedly try to leave these “separatist” forces in the Donbass and Crimea to destroy any basis for independent Ukrainian statehood.

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