The raid happened with the kind of made-for-TV brutality that Donald Trump has always admired in others.
In the early hours of January 2026, U.S. forces executed “Operation Southern Spear,” snatching Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and delivering him to a federal courtroom in New York.
As the MAGA base cheered the reassertion of American dominance in the Western Hemisphere, Trump declared the United States would simply “run” the country during a transition.
Almost simultaneously, thousands of miles away, the other shoe dropped. Trump’s administration ramped up pressure on Kyiv to accept a ceasefire that would cede the Donbas and Crimea to Russia.
The message to Volodymyr Zelensky was blunt: the weapons pipeline is closing, and it is time to accept reality.
To the casual observer, these events might seem like separate threads of a chaotic foreign policy. They are not. They are the twin faces of a single, cynical transaction.
Trump has just consummated the “Grand Bargain” that Vladimir Putin has been floating for seven years. He sold out European democracy to buy an imperial trophy in Latin America.
The “Strange Swap” Predicted in 2019
We cannot say we weren’t warned. During the impeachment depositions of 2019, Dr. Fiona Hill, the National Security Council’s top Russia expert, described a specific signal coming from the Kremlin. Russian intermediaries were not just engaging in idle chatter; they were proposing a geopolitical trade.
Hill testified that Moscow was pushing for a “very strange swap arrangement” involving Venezuela and Ukraine. The logic was crude but intelligible to a transactional mind like Trump’s.
Russian operatives signaled: “You want us out of your backyard. Well, you know, we have our own version of this. You’re in our backyard in Ukraine.”
The premise was a return to 19th-century spheres of influence. The United States gets to dominate the Americas (the Monroe Doctrine), and in exchange, Russia gets to dominate the post-Soviet space (its “near abroad”).
For years, this “swap” idea lingered in the background, obscured by the noise of the first Trump term. Now, in the aggressive dawn of his second, the trade has gone live.
The Architects of the Deal
This was never just about abstract maps. It was about money. The “irregular channel” that Trump used to pressure Ukraine in 2019 - led by Rudy Giuliani and his indicted associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman - was simultaneously active in Venezuela.
While Parnas and Fruman were shaking down Ukrainian officials for dirt on the Bidens, they were also working backchannels to arrange a “soft landing” for Maduro. Connective tissue between these two theaters was Harry Sargeant III, a Florida energy billionaire and Republican mega-donor.
Sargeant appears in the impeachment records as a figure of concern for national security officials. He accompanied Parnas and Fruman to meetings with Ukrainian energy executives, looking to secure gas contracts, while simultaneously eyeing opportunities in Venezuela’s sanction-crippled oil sector.
Sargeant’s involvement exposes the commercial engine of the swap. A U.S.-controlled Venezuela opens up the world’s largest proven oil reserves to American companies - and Trump’s donors.
A Russia-controlled Ukraine secures Moscow’s energy leverage over Europe. The swap was not just land for land; it was oil for gas, profit for power.
Manufacturing the Trade
Russia prepared for this moment by manufacturing a bargaining chip. In March 2019, the Kremlin flew 100 military specialists and tons of equipment into Caracas. This wasn’t because Putin cared about the survival of the Maduro regime; Venezuela was a financial black hole for Russia.
Putin deployed forces to America’s “backyard” to create a problem that only he could solve.
He built a lever. By propping up Maduro, Putin ensured that any American victory in Venezuela would require Russian acquiescence. He held the Western Hemisphere hostage to extract concessions in Eastern Europe.
Trump, who views foreign policy through the lens of real estate development, saw an asset he wanted (Venezuela) and a liability he didn’t care about (Ukraine).
Testimony from diplomat David Holmes revealed that Trump “didn’t give a s--- about Ukraine,” viewing it only in terms of what it could do for him personally.
To a man who asks “what’s in it for me,” trading a difficult European ally for a triumphant drug bust in Latin America is a no-brainer.
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The “Donroe Doctrine”
The result is what observers are calling the “Donroe Doctrine” - a hyper-aggressive update to the Monroe Doctrine where the U.S. asserts total control over the Western Hemisphere while abandoning the rest of the world to other predators.
Russian reaction to the Maduro capture has been telling. While issuing pro-forma condemnations of “illegal aggression,” the Kremlin has taken no concrete action to save its ally.
Instead, Russian state media is using the U.S. raid to legitimize Russia’s own war of conquest. If the U.S. can decapitate a sovereign government in Caracas because it doesn’t like the leader, they argue, Russia is justified in doing the same in Kyiv.
Putin is sacrificing his Venezuelan pawn to win the game in Ukraine. He is banking on the world accepting that Great Powers have the right to do whatever they want in their respective neighborhoods.
A Lose-Lose for Democracy
This trade represents a catastrophic moral collapse for the United States. By adopting Putin’s logic of “spheres of influence,” Trump has validated the idea that sovereign nations like Ukraine and Venezuela do not have the right to choose their own destiny. They are merely property to be bartered between empires.
Ukraine is being forced to the table with a gun to its head, told to surrender land for a “peace” that effectively ends its existence as a free state. Meanwhile, the U.S. celebrates a “victory” in Venezuela that looks less like liberation and more like a hostile corporate takeover.
Fiona Hill warned us. She saw the “strange swap” coming when it was just a whisper in diplomatic backchannels. We ignored the signal.
Now we are living in the world the swap created - a world where freedom is negotiable, and the map is redrawn by the highest bidder. Trump got his man in Caracas. Putin is about to get his country in Europe.
Check out my in depth eBook, “The Grand Bargain Realized: A Strategic Autopsy of the Venezuela-Ukraine ‘Spheres of Influence’ Swap (2019–2026),” providing a detailed analysis of the full scope of this scheme.
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When Trump started flip-flopping last year on supplying weapons to Ukraine, I asked myself then what country he planned to invade himself. Now it's done. It's clear Putin and he cooked this up. We were never told what was really discussed in Alaska.
Huh.... That ties a few things up nicely. A few things to add to that bargain; tRump got the oil, but Russia and China split the Venezuela silver reserves about a week before when the mines went black. So, the world lost 12% of its silver production when that happened and the US got a token shipment of silver (call it a red herring) and China with Russia split the balance of the reserves.
It will be interesting to see how Tech companies make out when their silver orders don't get filled and China and Russia have been hoarding silver for a long time....
Interesting....