Russia Once Offered U.S. Control of Venezuela for Free Rein in Ukraine

The exchange offer was recounted at the time in congressional testimony by Fiona Hill, who ran Russian and European affairs on the National Security Council during the first Trump administration.In 2019, Fiona Hill told a Congressional hearing that the Russians “were signaling very strongly that they wanted to somehow make some very strange swap arrangement between Venezuela and Ukraine.”Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York TimesJan. 5, 2026Updated 5:53 p.m. ETMoscow’s mixed reaction to the U.S. intervention in Venezuela has stirred memories of a barter reportedly offered by Russia seven years ago, during another moment of heightened tension between Washington and Caracas.At the time, Russia signaled that it was willing to allow the United States to act as it pleased in Venezuela, in exchange for Washington giving the Kremlin a free hand in Ukraine, according to Congressional testimony from Fiona Hill, who ran Russian and European affairs on the National Security Council during the first Trump administration.The Russians “were signaling very strongly that they wanted to somehow make some very strange swap arrangement between Venezuela and Ukraine,” Ms. Hill told a Congressional hearing in October 2019, more than two years before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.The proposals were informal, through commentators and newspaper articles, she said, but the gist was that if the United States wanted the freedom to maintain a sphere of influence over neighboring countries, then it ought to agree to Russia doing the same.“You want us out of your backyard,” said Ms. Hill in summarizing the Russian position. “We, you know, we have our own version of this. You’re in our backyard in Ukraine.”Ms. Hill said that she went to Moscow in person to reject the idea. The proposal came amid tensions between Caracas and Washington that prompted Moscow to deploy 100 military personnel and new weapons to shore up the rule of President Nicolás Maduro.Mr. Maduro’s removal marks the latest blow to a regime supported by Moscow, with President Bashar al-Assad of Syria toppled a little over a year ago.Officially, the Russian foreign ministry condemned the move as a violation of international law. But the main Russian priority is the war in Ukraine, where the Trump administration is trying to negotiate peace. The Kremlin is trying to strike a difficult balance, neither making any major concessions on Ukraine nor alienating the White House.Some senior Russian officials and commentators have expressed satisfaction that the United States seemed to be ditching international law in exchange for a policy of “might makes right,” an attitude hearkening back to an imperial era, more than a century ago, that both President Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia have looked on fondly.“The law of the strongest is clearly stronger than ordinary justice,” Dmitri Medvedev, the formerly liberal president of Russia turned war hawk wrote on social media, while adding in an interview with the official Tass news agency that Washington now has “no grounds, even formally, to reproach our country.”Neil MacFarquhar has been a Times reporter since 1995, writing about a range of topics from war to politics to the arts, both internationally and in the United States.SKIP