Andrei Illarionov: “Interest in Venezuela – this is part of the big strategy”

Grigory Pasko, journalist

Если Вы хотите прочитать оригинал данной статьи на русском языке, нажмите сюда.

President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev recently carried out visits to the countries of Africa. Before this we observed his voyage to the countries of Latin America. What is this intense interest of the Russian president in such faraway countries brought about by? Why not seek friends and partners in business closer to Russia? Medvedev himself said it this way: “…We did not devote that much attention to sufficiently faraway continents, ones such as Africa, Latin America, but now we are simply duty-bound to do this. This is our close-in-spirit neighbors, this is countries that we really have helped and which, on the one hand, are developing very tempestuously, and on the other hand, that have very many problems.”

As a philologist, I can make such a conclusion from this citation: kind and wealthy Russia wants to help those who are “close-in-spirit,” but having problems, like Egyptians, Nigerians, Namibians, Venezuelans… Perhaps it is not the mind of a philologist that are needed for an understanding of the situation. This is exactly why I turned for answers to my questions to a famous and experienced person – Senior Researcher of the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity of the Cato Institute in Washington, president of the Institute for Economic Analysis Andrei Illarionov. Andrei Nikolayevich in the period from the year 2000 through 27 December of the year 2005 was an advisor to the president of Russia.

Andrei Nikolayevich! Foreign policy in the times of Putin began to shift from the customary orbits and to move at times to unexpected not so much places as even sides of the world. Thus, our friends now are not Ukraine with Byelorussia, but Nicaragua, Venezuela, Iran, Bolivia… How and by what, in your view, is the interest of the current power of the RF in the countries of Latin America brought about and justified?