Was Moscow's denial on Venezuela the whole story?
A look back at the Kremlin's denial of Russian mercenaries in Venezuela, reported just before 31 January 2019.
What did Moscow say about Russian fighters in Venezuela as of 31 January 2019? Days earlier, on 28 January 2019, Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov denied that Russian mercenaries were present in the country. His denial came despite earlier reports that up to 100 of them might have been deployed to protect President Nicolás Maduro.
The exchange was filed under several headings at the time: the 2019 Venezuelan presidential crisis, United States–Venezuela relations, the wider crisis in Venezuela and the Second Cold War. That last label has been used by scholars and journalists for heightened geopolitical tensions in the twenty-first century, usually between the United States and NATO on one side and Russia or China on the other. Some commentators have used it as a comparison to the original Cold War, while others have discouraged its use for ongoing tensions.
The denial and the earlier reports stood side by side: one account spoke of up to 100 people sent to guard a president, the other flatly rejected it. Beyond that, the reports offered nothing to settle the matter, and the episode shows how a single press statement can become a marker in a larger argument about rival powers.
