Russian foreign minister visits Venezuela, offers support

CARACAS, Venezuela — Russia and Venezuela reviewed some of their hundreds of bilateral agreements covering the financial, energy, agricultural and other sectors during discussions between their top diplomats and other high-level officials Tuesday in the South American country. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his Venezuelan counterpart Yván Gil held a joint press conference in Caracas hours after the former arrived in the country in the second stop of a tour of four Latin American nations. Gil and Lavrov, who was expected to also meet with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, said their countries are developing an alternative to SWIFT, the system that enables global financial transactions but to which key Russian banks lost access last year. A global drop in oil prices last decade and government mismanagement pushed Venezuela into the political, social and economic crisis that has marked the entirety of Maduro’s presidency. The crisis fueled an opposition movement backed by the U.S. government, which under the Trump administration made forcing Maduro out one of its top foreign policy priorities and used economic sanctions on Venezuela’s state-owned energy company to keep the country’s oil — its most valuable resource — out of some Western markets.