Russia Floated Venezuela-for-Ukraine Deal to Trump - Ex-Advisor
In her 2019 Congress testimony, Trump’s former advisor Fiona Hill said Russia floated the idea of a deal to swap Venezuela for Ukraine via informal communications.
Russia in 2019 reportedly floated a deal to the first-term Trump administration, offering US influence over Venezuela in exchange for Washington stepping away from Ukraine, according to testimony given to the US Congress at the time.
Fiona Hill, a former senior White House advisor on Russia and Europe, who later testified during US President Donald Trump’s first impeachment inquiry, said the offer was made informally amid Venezuela’s 2019 political turmoil, marked by massive nationwide blackouts, food shortages and service disruptions that triggered widespread protests.
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Hill described the proposed deal as a “very strange swap arrangement.”
“This is, you know, March, April, into May, where we were having a standoff over Venezuela. And the Russians at this particular juncture were signaling very strongly that they wanted to somehow make some very strange swap arrangement between Venezuela and Ukraine,” she said.
Hill likened Russia’s proposal to the US’s Monroe Doctrine, a policy from 1823 that sought to keep European powers out of the Americas.
“In other words, if we were going to exert some semblance of the Monroe Doctrine of, you know, Russia keeping out of our backyard, because this is after the Russians had sent in these hundred operatives essentially to, you know, basically secure the Venezuelan government and to preempt what they were obviously taking to be some kind of US military action,” she said.
“They were basically signaling: You know, you have your Monroe Doctrine. You want us out of your backyard. Well, you know, we have our own version of this. You’re in our backyard in Ukraine,” she added.
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/67441
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Putin was supporting Maduro in trump's first term while the US was supporting Ukraine. Putin offered to trade Venezuela for Ukraine by withdrawing Russia's support for Venezuela in exchange for the US withdrawing support for Ukraine. I am shocked that trump waited until now to take Putin up on this deal.
Link to tweet
https://hromadske.ua/en/posts/russians-wanted-ukraine-in-exchange-for-venezuela-diplomat-fiona-hill-in-congress
In the spring of 2019, Russia sent hundreds of "operators" to Venezuela to support the regime of Nicolás Maduro, on whose resignation the United States insisted. At the same time, Moscow made it clear to Washington that they were ready to end their support for them, but only in exchange for Ukraine.
"The Russians [...] were signaling very strongly that they wanted to somehow make some very strange swap arrangement between Venezuela and Ukraine: [...] You want us out of your backyard [...]We have our own version of this. You're in our backyard in Ukraine. And we were getting that sent to us, kind of informally through channels. It was in the Russian press, various commentators,” says Fiona Hill at the U.S. Congress.
A former intelligence officer and later a diplomat, she served as the Senior Director of the U.S. National Security Council specializing in Russian and European affairs for the last two years. On November 21, Hill testified publicly in Congress as part of an investigation into the impeachment of President Donald Trump. And on October 14, the diplomat spoke at a closed session of Congress. The transcript of the speech was published on the website of the Intelligence Committee.
