The Kremlin has prepared an advance justification for its arms supplies to criminal groups, predictably shifting the blame onto the West and Ukraine.
Authoritarian regimes flourished by bending or breaking international rules. Once the US started to do the same, autocracies learned that a world without rules is far more dangerous for them than they had imagined.
Russia suffered a geopolitical setback following Maduro’s fall. More than that, there are lessons to be drawn from Venezuela shake-up: oil (and gas) cannot save an economy, and the regime can survive without its top man.