Russian officials indicated in 2019 that the Kremlin would be willing to withdraw its support for Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela in exchange for freedom of action in Ukraine, according to Fiona Hill, an adviser to US President Donald Trump at the time.

The Russians repeatedly raised the idea of a “Venezuela-Ukraine exchange,” Hill said during a congressional hearing in 2019. Her comments resurfaced this week and were shared on social media after the US military operation to capture the Venezuelan leader.

Hill said Russia promoted the idea through articles in Russian media that referenced the Monroe Doctrine, a 19th-century principle in which the United States opposed European meddling in the Western Hemisphere and, in exchange, agreed not to intervene in European affairs. Trump invoked it to justify the United States' intervention in Venezuela.

Although Russian officials never made a formal offer, Moscow's then-ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, hinted to her many times that Russia was willing to allow the United States to do as it pleased in Venezuela if the United States did the same for Russia in Europe, Hill told The Associated Press this week.

“Before there were ‘hints, nudges, winks, proposals.’ But no one (in the United States) was interested then,” Hill said.

Trump sent Hill, then his top adviser on Russia and Europe, to Moscow in April 2019 to deliver that message. She claimed she told Russian officials “Ukraine and Venezuela are not related to each other.”

At the time, she said, the White House was aligned with allies in recognizing Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó as the country's interim president.

But seven years later, the situation is different.

After capturing Maduro, the United States has said it will now “direct” Venezuelan policy. Trump has also renewed his threat to take control of Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark and part of the NATO military alliance, and has threatened to take military action against Colombia for facilitating the global sale of cocaine.

The Kremlin will be “delighted” with the idea of big countries, such as Russia, the United States and China, having spheres of influence because it shows that “might makes right,” Hill said.

Trump's actions in Venezuela make it difficult for Kiev's allies to condemn Russia's plans for Ukraine because "we just had a situation where the United States has taken control, or at least decapitated the government of another country, using a fictitious story," Hill told the AP.

The Trump administration has described its raid in Venezuela as a judicial operation, and claims that capturing Maduro was legal.

The Russian Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Hill's account.

The Russian president Vladimir Putin has not commented on the military operation to overthrow Maduro, but the Foreign Ministry issued statements condemning the United States' “aggression.”

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This story was translated from English by an AP editor with the help of a generative artificial intelligence tool.