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Did Russian mercenaries guard Maduro in Venezuela?
Summary
A retrospective on the Kremlin's denial of reports that Russian contractors were protecting Venezuela's president in January 2019.
Were Russian mercenaries protecting Nicolás Maduro? That question hung over the Venezuelan crisis on 31 January 2019, three days after the Kremlin gave its answer.
On 28 January 2019, Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov denied that Russian mercenaries were present in Venezuela. His denial came after earlier reports that as many as 100 of them might have been deployed to guard Maduro, who was president of Venezuela.
The exchange was part of the wider 2019 Venezuelan presidential crisis, which also touched on relations between the United States and Venezuela. Some scholars and journalists have placed episodes of this kind within what they call a Second Cold War, a label for heightened tensions between the United States and NATO on one side and Russia or China on the other. Others have discouraged using that term for ongoing tensions.
The Kremlin's position as of 31 January 2019 was therefore a flat denial: no Russian mercenaries were in Venezuela, whatever the earlier reports of up to 100 had suggested.
