US military action in Venezuela is seen as both a blessing and a curse for Russia's Putin

The lightning U.S. operation to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro can be seen as both a benefit and a burden for Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose forces botched an attempt to capture Ukraine’s capital and topple its leader at the start of Moscow's invasion nearly four years ago.

The ouster of Maduro highlights another Kremlin failure to support an ally, following the downfall of Syria’s former President Bashar Assad in 2024 and last year’s U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran. With the U.S. determined to establish control over Venezuela, Russia stands to lose a strategic foothold in the Western Hemisphere, along with billions of dollars invested in its oil industry.

But President Donald Trump's actions in Venezuela also are causing unease in Western nations and giving the Kremlin fresh talking points to defend its war in Ukraine.

In addition, Trump’s interest in wresting control of Greenland from NATO ally Denmark also threatens to destabilize the alliance at the moment when the U.S.-led efforts to broker peace in Ukraine enter a pivotal stage, distracting its members from their efforts to support Kyiv and provide it with security guarantees.

Putin himself hasn’t commented on the U.S. actions in Venezuela, which his diplomats have denounced as a blatant act of aggression. Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former president who serves as his deputy on the presidential Security Council, similarly rebuked Washington for trampling international law — but also complimented Trump on defending U.S. interests.

“Even though Trump’s action is completely unlawful, he cannot be denied a certain consistency -- he and his team are very aggressively upholding their country’s national interests,” Medvedev said.

On Wednesday, the U.S. said it seized two sanctioned oil tankers linked to Venezuela, including one flagged to Russia in the North Atlantic.

Since 2014's illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula that followed the ouster of a pro-Kremlin president in Kyiv, Putin has sought to justify his action by describing his neighbor as part of Russia’s sphere of influence where Western encroachment can’t be allowed.

Putin has argued that just as the U.S. would bristle at any foreign military presence in the Western Hemisphere, Russia sees NATO’s expansion to its borders as a major security threat. He cited Ukraine’s bid to join the military alliance as a key reason behind his full-scale invasion of the country.

“We have made it clear and unambiguous that further eastward expansion of NATO is unacceptable,” Putin said shortly before sending troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. “Are we the ones placing missiles near the U.S. borders? No, it’s the U.S. that has brought its missiles to our doorstep.”

Long before the invasion, Russia tested the ground on a possible deal under which it would refrain from meddling in Latin America in exchange for the U.S. offering Moscow free rein in Europe.

Fiona Hill, who oversaw Russia and Europe on Trump's National Security Council during his first term, testified before Congress in 2019 that the Russians were signaling their willingness to make such an arrangement involving Venezuela and Ukraine.

Russia never made a formal offer, Hill told The Associated Press in an interview, but Moscow’s then-ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, “hinted ... many times” to her that Russia could cede its influence in Venezuela to the U.S. in exchange for a sphere of influence in Europe.

She said Trump's administration wasn’t interested in the Russian overtures that she described as a “hint-hint, nudge-nudge, wink-wink, how-about-doing-a-deal” offer. In April 2019, Hill was sent to Moscow to convey the message that “nobody’s interested. ... Ukraine and Venezuela are not related to each other.”

Hill said she did not know if the winds have now changed and whether there was any deal between the U.S. and Russia to swap spheres of influence in Venezuela and Ukraine, but she noted that many officials, including herself, who were involved in “restraining” Trump in his first term aren't around for his second.

She argued that U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio would likely be the only member of the Trump administration who would now resist such a proposal, but added that others, including Trump envoy Steve Witkoff, could have a different view.

“Who knows what Witkoff and others have been chatting about recently?” Hill asked.

Before Maduro was captured, AP reported Russia had started evacuating families of diplomats from Venezuela. When asked about the move, Hill said it would not be “implausible” that Witkoff gave Moscow a “courtesy heads-up.”

Sam Greene, a Russia expert at King’s College London, observed that Moscow may have backed down on Venezuela in the expectation of the U.S. giving it a free hand on Ukraine.

“My worry is that it may be part of a tacit agreement, by which Washington, Moscow and Beijing agree not to deter one another against interventions in their putative spheres of influence,” he wrote on X.

Before the invasion of Ukraine, senior Russian officials had issued vague warnings that Moscow could deploy troops or military assets to Cuba and Venezuela — statements that the U.S. dismissed as bluster. Some drew parallels to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis — when the Soviet Union deployed missiles to Cuba and the U.S. imposed a naval blockade of the island.

Russian-Cuban ties withered after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, plunging Cuba into a grueling depression. Soon after his first election in 2000, Putin ordered the closure of a Soviet-built military surveillance facility in Cuba as he sought to improve ties with Washington. As tensions with the U.S. and its allies mounted, however, Moscow again intensified trade and other contacts with Cuba and sent warships to visit the island.

Russia also has invested heavily in Venezuela's oil industry, as did China, and offered Caracas generous loans to purchase top-of-the-line air defense missiles, fighter jets and other weapons. On several occasions, most recently in 2018, it dispatched its nuclear-capable Tu-160 bombers to Venezuela in a projection of force.

Military experts have said, however, that any attempt by Russia to establish a permanent military foothold in the Western Hemisphere would face overwhelming logistical challenges.

The U.S. seizure of Maduro and his wife was seen worldwide as the return of the “might- makes-right” doctrine, backing Moscow’s argument that its action in Ukraine protects its vital interests the way the U.S. did in Venezuela.

After its action in Venezuela, the U.S. has “nothing to formally reproach our country for,” Medvedev noted.

Hill noted that Maduro’s capture makes it harder for countries to condemn Russia’s action in Ukraine because “we’ve just had a situation where the U.S. has taken over — or at least decapitated the government of another country — using fiction.”

An indictment accuses Maduro and others of working with drug cartels to facilitate the shipment of thousands of tons of cocaine into the U.S.

Fyodor Lukyanov, a Kremlin-connected, Moscow-based foreign policy expert, observed that “if we consider what’s happening from the perspective of setting a precedent, then we couldn’t ask for anything better, and this includes Trump’s conviction that the authorities in Venezuela must be approved by Washington.”

Russian hawks, meanwhile, argue the U.S. action in Venezuela has created a new sense of urgency for Moscow to dramatically speed up its offensive in Ukraine.

“Ukraine under our full control is our pass to the Great Powers club,” Alexander Dugin, a hard-line nationalist ideologue, wrote in a commentary.

AP European Security Correspondent Emma Burrows in London contributed.

FILE - A government supporter holds an image of President Nicolas Maduro during a women's march to demand his return in Caracas, Venezuela, Jan. 6, 2026, three days after U.S. forces captured him and his wife. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix, File)

FILE - Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, shakes hands with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro during their meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Wednesday, May 7, 2025, ahead of celebrations of the 80th anniversary of the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany during the World War II. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, file)

NEW YORK (AP) — Some 250 years after “Common Sense” helped inspire the 13 colonies to declare independence, Thomas Paine might receive a long-anticipated tribute from his adopted country.

A Paine memorial in Washington, D.C., authorized by a 2022 law, awaits approval from the U.S. Department of Interior. It would be the first landmark in the nation's capital to be dedicated to one of the American Revolution's most stirring, popular and quotable advocates — who also was one of the most intensely debated men of his time.

“He was a critical and singular voice,” said U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a sponsor of the bill that backed the memorial. He said Paine has long been “underrecognized and overlooked.”

Saturday marks the 250th anniversary of the publication of Paine's “Common Sense,” among the first major milestones of a yearlong commemoration of the country’s founding and the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

Paine supporters have waited decades for a memorial in the District of Columbia, and success is still not ensured: Federal memorials are initiated by Congress but usually built through private donations. In 1992, President George H.W. Bush signed bipartisan legislation for such a memorial, but the project was delayed, failed to attract adequate funding and was essentially forgotten by the mid-2000s.

The fate of the current legislation depends not just on financial support, but on President Donald Trump's interior secretary, Doug Burgum.

In September 2024, the memorial was recommended by the National Capital Memorial Advisory Commission for placement on the National Mall. Burgum needs to endorse the plan, which would be sent back to Congress for final enactment. If approved, the memorial would have a 2030 deadline for completion.

A spokesperson for the department declined comment when asked about the timing for a decision.

“We are staying optimistic because we feel that Thomas Paine is such an important figure in the founding of the United States of America,” said Margaret Downey, president of the Thomas Paine Memorial Association, which has a mission to establish a memorial in Washington.

Scholars note that well into the 20th century, federal honors for Paine would have been nearly impossible. While Paine first made his name through “Common Sense,” the latter part of his life was defined by another pamphlet, “The Age of Reason.”

Published in installments starting in 1794, it was a fierce attack against organized religion. Paine believed in God and a divinely created universe but accepted no single faith. He scorned what he described as the Bible's “paltry stories" and said Christianity was “too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice.”

By the time of his death, in New York in 1809, he was estranged from friends and many of the surviving founders; only a handful of mourners attended his funeral. He has since been championed by everyone from labor leaders and communists to Thomas Edison, but presidents before Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s rarely quoted him. Theodore Roosevelt referred to him as a “filthy little atheist.”

There are Paine landmarks around the country, including a monument and museum in New Rochelle, New York, and statue in Morristown, New Jersey. But other communities have resisted. In 1955, Mayor Walter H. Reynolds of Providence, Rhode Island, rejected a proposed Paine statue, saying “he was and remains so controversial a character.”

Harvey J. Kaye, author of “Thomas Paine and the Promise of America,” cites the election of Ronald Reagan as president in 1980 as a surprising turning point. Reagan's victory was widely seen as a triumph for the modern conservative movement, but Reagan alarmed some Republicans and pleased Paine admirers during his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention when he quoted Paine's famous call to action: “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”

Reagan helped make Paine palatable to both parties, Kaye said. When Congress approved a memorial in 1992, supporters ranged from a liberal giant, Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, to a right-wing hero, Republican Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina.

“Reagan opened the door,” Kaye said.

Paine's story is very much American. He was a self-educated immigrant from Britain who departed for the colonies with little money but with hopes for a better life.

He was born Thomas Pain in Thetford in 1737, some 90 miles outside of London (he added the “e” to his last name after arriving in America). Paine was on the move for much of his early life. He spent just a few years in school before leaving at age 13 to work as an apprentice for his father, a corset maker. He would change jobs often, from teaching at a private academy to working as a government excise officer to running a tobacco shop.

By the time he sailed to the New World in 1774, he was struggling with debt, had been married twice and had failed or made himself unwelcome in virtually every profession he entered. But Paine also had absorbed enough of London’s intellectual life to form radical ideas about government and religion and to meet Benjamin Franklin, who provided him a letter of introduction that helped him find work in Philadelphia as a contributor to The Pennsylvania Magazine.

The Revolutionary War began in April 1775 and pamphlets helped frame the arguments, much as social media posts do today. The Philadelphia-based statesman and physician Benjamin Rush was impressed enough with Paine to suggest that he put forth his own thoughts. Paine had wanted to call his pamphlet “Plain Truth,” but agreed to Rush's idea: “Common Sense.”

Paine's brief tract was credited to “an Englishman” and released on Jan. 10, 1776. Later expanded to 47 pages, it was a popular sensation. Historians differ over how many copies were sold, but “Common Sense” was widely shared, talked about and read aloud.

Paine's urgent, accessible prose was credited for helping to shift public opinion from simply opposing British aggression to calling for a full break. His vision was radical, even compared to some of his fellow revolutionaries. In taking on the British and King George III, he did not just attack the actions of an individual king, but the very idea of hereditary rule and monarchy. He denounced both as “evil” and “exceedingly ridiculous.”

“Of more worth is one honest man to society and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived,” he stated.

Historian Eric Foner would write that Paine’s appeal lasted through “his impatience with the past, his critical stance toward existing institutions, his belief that men can shape their own destiny.” But “Common Sense” was despised by British loyalists and challenged by some American leaders.

John Adams would refer to Paine as a “star of disaster,” while Franklin worried about his “rude way of writing.” Meanwhile, George Washington valued “Common Sense” for its “sound doctrine” and ”unanswerable reasoning,” and Thomas Jefferson, soon to be the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, befriended Paine and later invited him to the White House when he was president.

Paine's message continues to be invoked by those on both sides of the political divide.

In his 2025 year-end report on the federal judiciary, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts began by citing the anniversary of “Common Sense” and praising Paine for “shunning legalese” as he articulated that “government's purpose is to serve the people.” Last year, passages from “Common Sense” appeared often during the nationwide “No Kings” rallies against Trump's policies.

One demonstrator's sign in Boston said, “No King! No Tyranny! It's Common Sense.”

This Library of Congress provided image shows the title page of founding-father Thomas Paine's book "Common Sense." (Library of Congress via AP)