Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and Russian President Vladimir Putin shake hands at the Kremlin in Moscow, in May, 2025. Photo: Alexander Zemlianichenko/EFE.
By Misión Verdad – 18 Nov, 2025
Following its unanimous approval by Venezuela’s National Assembly, President Nicolás Maduro enacted the Law Approving the Treaty of Strategic Partnership and Cooperation between Venezuela and Russia on October 7, 2025.
This step legally formalized an instrument originally signed in Moscow on May 7, 2025, consolidating the most ambitious and highest-ranking bilateral mechanism signed between the two nations in more than two decades of strategic relationship.
This is a treaty that establishes a comprehensive roadmap for the next decade, aimed at strengthening cooperation in key areas such as energy, finance, infrastructure, security, communications, scientific research, mining, and transport.
As Foreign Minister Yván Gil pointed out at the time of its signing, the agreement contains broad provisions that deepen the existing multi-sectoral cooperation architecture, now under a legal framework of greater stability and predictability.
With its promulgation, this instrument is elevated to the rank of state foreign policy, showcasing that its continuity and execution transcend internal political circumstances.
Nature of a strategic partnership treaty
In the field of contemporary diplomacy, a Strategic Partnership Treaty or Strategic Alliance constitutes a top-level pact defining a privileged relationship between two states.
It goes far beyond ordinary diplomatic ties, establishing a permanent, multidimensional, and long-term cooperation framework that involves coordination in political, economic, technical-military, cultural, and scientific matters, as well as consultation mechanisms to address challenges or threats on a regional or even global scale.
Since India signed the first of these agreements with Russia in 2000, the instrument has become established as a tool for institutionalizing deep alliances in an international environment characterized by the nefarious actions of the Global North.
The confidential nature of certain clauses in treaties of this type is common, especially on sensitive issues. However, its very existence implies a qualitative leap in the bilateral relationship, by creating reciprocal obligations that operate as formal guarantees of mutual support, expanded cooperation and strategic convergence.
An agreement consistent with Russia’s foreign policy concept
The signing of the treaty with Venezuela should be understood in the context of the update of the Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation, approved by President Vladimir Putin on March 31, 2023.
This document, a key piece of Russian strategic thinking since 1993, establishes guidelines for Moscow’s foreign policy in a scenario marked by the necessary transition to a multipolar world.
In its section dedicated to Latin America and the Caribbean, the Concept identifies Venezuela as one of the priority partners in the region, along with Brazil, Cuba, and Nicaragua.
Russia aims to deepen its partnership with those Latin American states facing external pressures and seeking to defend their sovereignty through pragmatic, de-ideologized and mutually beneficial ties. Among the priorities identified are:
• support for states under pressure from Washington, through security and military-technical cooperation;
• the expansion of trade and investment ties;
• the deepening of cultural, scientific, and technological cooperation;
• the consolidation of political alliances to strengthen the multipolar architecture.
Within this framework, the Strategic Partnership with Venezuela constitutes the decisive implementation of the strategic guidelines defined by Moscow for the region.
President Putin’s fast-track ratification of the agreement on October 27, 2025, affirms its importance within Russian foreign policy.
Duma and National Assembly
The approval process for the Strategic Partnership and Cooperation Treaty between Venezuela and Russia advanced simultaneously and decisively in the legislative bodies of both countries, revealing the political consensus that accompanies this strategic alliance.
In Caracas, the National Assembly unanimously approved the instrument on September 30, in an act where the president of the legislative body, Jorge Rodríguez, described it as the most authentic expression of brotherhood and a new way of relating between peoples and governments.
Rodríguez highlighted the fact that, in a global context where neo-fascist and extremist expressions are resurging, it is especially significant that Venezuela and Russia strengthen a bond based on solidarity, cooperation and the shared defense of sovereignty.
In parallel, the State Duma of the Russian Federation also ratified the treaty unanimously. The speaker of the Russian State Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, highlighted the cohesion of all parliamentary factions around the initiative and emphasized that the document transcends the bilateral dimension: it constitutes a concrete contribution to the construction of a multipolar world and an opportunity for Venezuela to strengthen its sovereign development.
Volodin recalled that Venezuela faces profound challenges in its struggle to preserve its sovereignty and assured that no threat will succeed in subduing the Venezuelan people, as the new multipolar order has already consolidated itself as an international reality.
Venezuela: the only country in Latin America with an instrument of this nature
With the final approval of the treaty, Venezuela becomes the only country in Latin America and the Caribbean that maintains a legal instrument of full strategic partnership with Russia.
In other regions of the world, similar agreements are in place with Belarus, Abkhazia, China, Iran, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, each with specific nuances depending on the political, military, and economic strength of its ties with Moscow. Just a few days ago, President Putin signed an agreement of this kind with his Kazakh counterpart.
The inclusion of Venezuela in this small group reflects the strategic value that Russia places on the country, both for its energy importance and its geopolitical location.
This unique status places Caracas on a privileged platform to develop cooperation projects that strengthen energy, technological, and financial sovereignty, as well as to advance political coordination schemes in an international environment characterized by increasing aggression and hybrid warfare.
Russia’s Foreign Minister Lavrov Calls US Military Escalation Against Venezuela ‘Unacceptable’
This progress takes on greater significance in the context of the sustained aggression by the US empire against Venezuela. Faced with these attacks, the treaty represents a milestone in bilateral relations, as it strengthens its platform of alliances and provides lasting institutional support.
In the short term, this agreement is projected to serve as the roadmap for the next meeting of the High-Level Intergovernmental Commission (HLIC), the central and operational mechanism for bilateral cooperation. The HLIC will be the forum where the principles established in the treaty are translated into projects, strategic investments, scientific and technological cooperation, financial integration, and coordination in energy and security matters.
Thus, Venezuela and Russia enter an unprecedented phase of their relationship amidst a process that inevitably generates discomfort in Washington, which responds to the sovereign decision of two states to move toward a stable, mature, and coherent association with the dynamics of the emerging multipolar world.
(Misión Verdad) with Orinoco Tribune content
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/AU
Misión Verdad
Misión Verdad is a Venezuelan investigative journalism website with a socialist perspective in defense of the Bolivarian Revolution
