I have so many lists: my personal To-Do list, which never seems to shrink; my Bucket List of places I’ve always wanted to visit and now never will; my Grocery List, which is totally uninteresting; my List of News Items that may or may not become subjects of some of my blog articles.

Unfortunately, there’s also a list of countries that — for reasons I will never fully understand — seem unable to break ties with Vladimir Putin’s Russia. I call that one my Sh*t List. And now I’ve had to add Venezuela to it.

What they have done recently to earn this dubious honor is to send two Colombian citizens to an uncertain fate in the hands of Russia’s FSB (Federal Security Service, successor to the KGB) — two men who had broken no laws in Venezuela . . . or anywhere else, for that matter, except in the twisted mind of Vladimir Putin.

What those men did was simply spend nine months in Ukraine, where they are “suspected of fighting for the Ukrainian military.” [Tara John, Stefano Pozzebon, Mariya Knight and Maija-Liisa Ehlinger, CNN, August 31, 2024.]

The two men — Jose Aron Medina and Alexander Ante — were on their way home to Colombia in mid-July, when they seemingly vanished during a lay-over in Caracas, Venezuela. They reappeared a month and a half later, on August 30th, in a video released by the FSB, accusing them of “participating in hostilities on the side of Ukraine against the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation as mercenaries.” The FSB statement said the two men were carrying “documents confirming their illegal activities,” as well as clothing bearing the insignia of Ukraine’s Carpathian Sich battalion. [Id.]

And so they wound up here:

But how is that even possible??!!!

Remember: These men are citizens of Colombia. They had been in Ukraine. They were returning home to Colombia, and were detained in Venezuela, from where they were extradited to Russia. They are reportedly being held in the notorious high-security Lefortovo Prison while being “investigated for paid participation in an armed conflict, which in Russia carries a maximum sentence of up to 15 years behind bars.” [Eva Hartog, Politico, August 30, 2024.]

What the hell . . . ?

There are far too many unknowns here. First and foremost: Why did they opt to travel through Venezuela? Their route home took them from Warsaw, Poland, to Madrid, Spain, and then to Caracas. But there are direct flights from Spain to Colombia. Venezuela is not the friendliest of countries. Who made their travel plans for them, or advised them on the stop in Caracas?

And why were they even on Moscow’s radar? They’re just two of many foreigners who have joined in Ukraine’s defense. Are they all being tracked, possibly marked for kidnapping and prosecution? Or is there something “special” about Medina and Ante that we don’t know?

But the biggest question in my mind concerns fine points of international law about which I know next to nothing. Yes, Venezuela has an extradition treaty with Russia. But are they allowed to honor arrest warrants issued by a country (in this case, Russia) against citizens of a third country who have not broken a law in Venezuela? Is fighting for Ukraine a violation of any international law? Would Russia’s warrant be legally enforceable against a foreign citizen who has not even set foot in Russia? Or does Russia’s claim to “own” parts of Ukraine count as “Russian territory”? And so on, and so on . . .

This is just one more example of the length of Putin’s reach around the world: Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa, Latin America . . . there seems no end to it, with the possible exception of those non-aligned penguins in Antarctica.

Should we (the U.S. and our allies) now start snatching the members of the Wagner Group (newly renamed the Africa Corps) and other mercenaries fighting for Russia in Ukraine and extraditing them to some hidden place? There must be thousands of them. What makes Putin think it’s all right for him and not us . . . ?

Oh, yeah — it’s that “N” word again: Narcissism.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
9/1/24