By Theodore Shoebat

There is some information coming out saying that Russia had an involvement in the attempted coup to overthrow Maduro. But it wasn’t as though Russia was on the side of America’s puppet, Juan Guido, but rather wanted to replace Maduro with its own puppet, Padrino Lopez. This information was given to the Daily Beast which recently published an article on the subject. One senior law enforcement officer who was given the alias of “Simón” spoke with the publication about what he witnessed on the night of the coup. He was supposedly present at the La Carlota military base where Guaido reportedly made his call for revolt while acting like the military was on his side. According to Simon, the soldiers in the base in fact refused to let Guaido inside and that he, moments later, made his declaration as if he was within the base. Simon told the Daily Beast’s Annika Hernroth:

“I was there, I saw it with my own eyes. Guaidó was asking the military to let him into La Carlota, and they refused, and then a few minutes afterwards he was making that video claiming he was inside.

…

When he [self-declared, U.S.-backed President Juan Guaidó] called for the Venezuelan people to come and join him, Guaidó gave the impression that he had the support of the military and that they had turned, but that wasn’t even almost true … He tried to win time and turn the tide using public opinion—based on a fundamental untruth.”

There were soldiers and SEBIN (Venezuelan intelligence) agents with Guaido, but according to Simon these were paid to show their support with money and offers to leave Venezuela. Guaido’s right hand collaborator, Leopoldo Lopez, who was for years stuck in house arrest, was suppose to join Guaido in his declaration of a coup. But, the opposition got word that Leopoldo was going to be sent to the SEBIN prison. The call for a coup was suppose to be done on May 1st, but once it was known that Leopoldo was going to be moved to an actual prison, this broke the morale of the movement.  Without Leopoldo, there would a tremendous amount of morale energy lacking in the call for the overthrow of Maduro. Instead, Guaido made his call for a coup on April 30th and did so haphazardly. 

There was another aspect of this information that gave a fascination dimension to what was told to the Daily Beast: Russia had plans for Maduro’s replacement by Padrino Lopez, the Defense Minister of Venezuela.The initial plan was to have Padrino Lopez, alongside a number of generals, negotiate with the US to give Guido power, allow Maduro to flee to Cuba, and then double-cross Guaido so that Padrino could take power. As one source who had the alias of “Alejandro” told the Daily Beast:

“Guaidó found out that they were going to arrest him and most of us think that he was simply set up … The generals, with Padrino in charge, were going to double cross him and send Leopoldo López to Ramo Verde [military prison].”

Guaido found out that they were going to arrest Leopoldo Lopez and the plan for Padrino’s power grab fell apart. The Russians, worried about Maduro’s absence and an American puppet politician taking his place, adapted to the sudden shift of the situation and had Padrino stop Maduro from going to Cuba in order to replace an American puppet from filling the power vacuum. Guaido’s coup attempt, according to Alejandro, was not a failure but simply an escape from a worse outcome since if Guido would have followed through he would have been betrayed and replaced by Padrino. “The reality is that if Plan A had not been aborted, today we would have a military dictatorship led by Padrino and in the service of Russia. The opposition wasn’t shot down, it dodged a bullet,” he says.

The information is fascinating, and may give insight to the power games between America and her arch rival, Russia.