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Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro (right) and Russian Secretary of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev (left) shaking hands during the official visit of the top Russian official to Venezuela's Miraflores Palace, Caracas, February 28. Photo: Venezuela's Presidential Press.
Caracas, February 28, 2023 (OrinocoTribune.com)—Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of Russia’s Security Council and one of the top-ranked Russian officials, arrived this Tuesday to Caracas in order to strengthen security ties with Venezuela and meet with President Nicolas Maduro.
In his previous stopover, Patrushev, met with the president of Algeria, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, with whom he discussed a series of mutual cooperation issues. In Caracas, Patrushev will hold consultations with his Venezuelan counterparts on security issues with the participation of representatives from various ministries of both countries.
Local news outlets in Venezuela reported the meeting that Patrushev and other Russian officers had with President Nicolas Maduro and Venezuelan top security officers in Miraflores palace during Tuesday afternoon.
The meeting was attended, from the Venezuelan side, by Deputy Cilia Flores, Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino, Interior Minister Remigio Ceballos, and Operational Strategic Commander of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (CEOFANB) Domingo Hernández Lárez.
On December 15, representatives of Venezuela and Russia signed 15 agreements in strategic areas, in order to continue advancing in the cooperative relationship that both nations have built in recent years.
Who is Patrushev?
The Venezuelan outlet Misión Verdad published a short profile of the senior Russian officer, indicating that Patrushev, born in 1951 in Leningrad —today Saint Petersburg—has served as an official in the security and intelligence community of the Soviet Union, and now Russia, since 1974.
#EnVivo 📹 | Presidente @NicolasMaduro sostiene reunión con el secretario del Consejo de Seguridad de la Federación de Rusia, Nikolái Pátrushev.https://t.co/ciQTiEFMgx
— Prensa Presidencial (@PresidencialVen) February 28, 2023
He worked in the counterintelligence units of the KGB—the Soviet intelligence agency—in the Leningrad region during the Soviet era. Since then, he has held various national and regional security positions. From August 1999 to May 2008, he served as director of Russia’s FSB, the heir to the KGB after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
By presidential decree, Patrushev was appointed secretary of the Security Council of Russia in 2008, a position he holds to this day. For this reason, and due to his extensive resumé in state security affairs, he is considered one of President Vladimir Putin’s most trusted officials. He has decision-making power in the security area of that country and a notable level of influence in the security policy of the Eurasian giant.
Since 2018, Russia has been on the “sanctioned” list of the United States Department of the Treasury.
#EnFotos📷| En el Palacio de Miraflores el Jefe de Estado, @NicolasMaduro recibió al Secretario del Consejo de Seguridad de la Federación de Rusia, Nikolái Pátrushev, a fin de fortalecer la cooperación en seguridad entre ambas naciones hermanas.#NoAlColonialismoJurídico pic.twitter.com/bc6ujYwmUk
— VTV CANAL 8 (@VTVcanal8) February 28, 2023
The Venezuelan outlet quoted a recent statement by Patrushev, explaining why the US and NATO embarked on an aggressive strategy against Russia:
The US authorities, together with big business, serve the interests of multinational corporations, including the military-industrial complex. The assertive foreign policy of the White House, the unbridled aggressiveness of NATO, the rise of the military bloc AUKUS, and other [institutions] are also a consequence of corporate influence.
There is no place for our country in the West. A group of world powers is upset with Russia because it enjoys rich resources, a vast territory, [and] intelligent and self-sufficient people who love their country, its traditions, and history.
Transnational corporations are nervous about the worldview and ideological divergence between Russia and the countries that are under the control of Western capital. Corporations are focused on enriching themselves and developing a consumer society. Russia, on the other hand, represents a reasonable balance between spiritual and moral values and socioeconomic development.
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In this context, the Westerners seek to weaken our country, dismember it, destroy the Russian language and the Russian world. They have long since perfected the technology to undermine their adversaries from within and fragment them into small states.
This was their modus operandi before, when, for example, London divided the empires at the end of the First World War and established dozens of countries. This is how it is done today too. A striking example is Yugoslavia. The state, which had an independent voice in the international arena, was divided into six countries.
The events in Ukraine are not a confrontation between Moscow and Kiev, they are a military confrontation between Russia and NATO and, above all, the United States and Great Britain with the aim of eventually erasing [Russia] from the political map of the world.
Patrushev’s current visit to Venezuela is related to a series of international meetings that he has been holding in countries of the so-called multipolar bloc, including with senior representatives of China and Iran, Misión Verdad reported.
🇷🇺🇨🇳Vladimir Putin holds a meeting in Moscow with Wang Yi
Putin statements:
◽️Russian-Chinese relations are developing as we planned, we are reaching new frontiers
◽️Cooperation between Russia and China is very important for the stabilization of the international situation pic.twitter.com/xGiqmaH5WY
— AZ 🛰🌏🌍🌎 (@AZgeopolitics) February 22, 2023
Patrushev joined Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and President Putin during the meeting last week with China’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Wang Yi in Moscow, amid US attacks against China hypocritically demanding the Asian giant halt providing military assistance to Russia, although the US and NATO have flooded Ukraine with both offensive and defensive weapons and military equipment since at least 2014.
International outlets reported that Patrushev brought a personal invitation from President Putin encouraging President Maduro to make an official visit to Russia.
Orinoco Tribune special by staff
OT/JRE/SL
