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Venezuela would suffer collateral damage from the sanctions imposed on Russia
The government of Venezuela will suffer collateral damage from the war due to the impact that the sanctions imposed on the Putin government will cause in the Venezuelan economic sector.
Venezuela, which has nothing to do with the current war in Europe, will pay a high cost, not for the expressed support for Putin, but for having a PDVSA office in the Russian capital, whose operations will also be affected due to the imposed blockade to Russia by the international community.
The oil analyst, José Toro Hardy, declared that for this reason Venezuela will be harmed, since PDVSA's accounts will be blocked for being involved in the sanctions against Russia.
Toro Hardy assures that if the international community withdraws Russia from the Swift system, consequently Venezuela would also be out of international operations.
On the other hand, the economist and deputy, José Guerra, pointed out that if the Venezuelan money is in Russian banks, it will not be able to carry out transactions.
He stressed that, due to the strong sanctions that Russia is suffering, the economic transactions of the Venezuelan government will be seen with complications.
In that context, if PDVSA holds its funds in a Russian bank account that is excluded from Swift and intends to transact to a bank in another country to make payments, it will not be able to do so.
In March 2019, in an attempt to evade sanctions by the Maduro government, PDVSA moved its offices from Lisbon to Moscow.
Since then, all economic transactions involving the sale of Venezuelan oil and gold are operated from the Russian capital, something that before the first sanctions were carried out from the Central Bank of Venezuela.
Toro Hardy assures that the government of Nicolás Maduro hides the amounts from the Central Bank and international markets, in order to assess how the war in Ukraine is affecting.
In addition, he assured that this war affects Venezuela in all areas "as well as Cuba and Nicaragua, who also depend on oil."
Financial doors closed for Venezuela
Vladimir Putin has been preparing this war for some time because they have shown that they do not care about the sanctions that Russia is suffering, in addition to the fact that Russia has around 600,000 million dollars in its international reserves.
In reference to this, Toro Hardy points out that it is not clear if these reserves will be enough to maintain the war for a long time.
What does seem to be true, as experts have assured, is that the economic sanctions that Russia received forced it to cut the economic aid budget for different countries.
For Toro Hardy, the panorama of the Maduro government is "dark", since the Venezuelan economy has been hit by these sanctions and now those of Russia, one of the main financiers of the Venezuelan government, are added.
If the financial channel for Russia and Iran is closed, it is likely that the Venezuelan government will be forced to resume the dialogue process in Mexico, to seek agreements that lead to the lifting of sanctions.
Such dialogue was suspended by the same government in October 2021, after the capture of Alex Saab.
According to different international media, during the 22 years of the "Chavista" government , Venezuela's oil production has had a significant drop. It has fallen from 3.3 million barrels per day to 680,000.
