What was akin to a celebration of global dictators and political rogues, Venezuela's Marxist dictator, Nicholas Maduro, visited Moscow to join Vladimir Putin in celebrating Russia's May 9 Victory Day Parade, the 80th anniversary of the Soviet Union's triumph over Nazi Germany. Mr Putin's pantheon included communist China's leader Xi Jinping and Brazil's President Lula da Silva, among others.
Victory Day remains a sacred day for Russia and a symbolic high point in Mr Putin's cult of personality, pseudo-patriotism, and propaganda. Massive military parades have long evoked the former Soviets and now, of course, Mr Putin's Russia.
As an extra touch, Chinese People's Liberation Army troops goose-stepped in Red Square to honour the Moscow-Beijing alliance.
Russia's Victory Day follows the Western allies' Victory in Europe Day (VE Day), celebrated by the US, France, and the United Kingdom as the surrender of Nazi Germany.
But for Mr Putin, the narrative of World War II and the current Ukraine war mix seamlessly into a witch's brew of misappropriating history for his current aggression into a kind of political pornography so well tuned by the Kremlin.
But when Mr Maduro returned to his capital, Caracas, he was soon shocked by the escape of five key political opposition figures who had been whisked out of the country by the United States. The five, who were sheltering in the Argentine embassy in Caracas for over a year, were spirited out after Donald Trump gave the nod for a special extraction operation.
The five, including Magalli Meda, Claudia Macero, and Humberto Villalobos, had been working for the presidential campaign of opposition leader Maria Corina Machado last year when regime thugs tried to arrest them. They are now safely in Miami, Florida.
Venezuela's opposition leader María Corina Machado remains in hiding in her country. In an exclusive interview on Sunday Morning Futures on FOX News, Ms Machado thanked Mr Trump and his great team for "such a complex and precise operation" to free the opposition figures in Caracas. She stressed Mr Maduro still holds 900 political prisoners.
Last July, Mr Maduro was "reelected" for a third term as president, but the opposition and many countries, including the US and international observers, rejected the result as rigged and fraudulent and recognised the now-exiled opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez as the legitimate president-elect.
Venezuela, an oil-rich and once reasonably prosperous South American country, has sunk into a socialist quagmire over the past 25 years.
First, the charismatic Hugo Chavez and then autocrat Mr Maduro have turned Venezuela, despite its oil wealth, into a regime of mismanagement, corruption, and authoritarian political control. The once democratic country has become dependent on China for economic support and Cuba for political inspiration.
Naturally, much of the Venezuelan story is lubricated in oil, in this case by petroleum politics with the American company Chevron, a major investor. Nonetheless, late in the Biden administration, oil export sanctions were eased.
Now, Mr Trump has said, "The United States will not tolerate any third countries or their oil companies producing, extracting, or exporting oil and oil-related products with the Maduro regime in Venezuela. This is a regime that has consistently stolen elections, pillaged its people, and colluded with our enemies. Any country that allows its companies to produce, extract, or export from Venezuela will be subject to new tariffs, and any companies will be subject to sanctions."
China and India are major purchasers of Venezuelan petroleum.
Given the political turbulence over the past two decades, there has been a massive migration/exodus of Venezuelans, including the former bedrock middle class. According to the UN, over 7.9 million have fled their country as migrants and refugees; 1.3 million are seeking asylum, mostly in Latin American countries like Colombia, Brazil, Peru, and Argentina.
Now, there are over one million Venezuelans in the United States, mostly settled in Florida. But among legal migrants, there's a dangerous undertow of Venezuelan gangs, such as the notorious Tren de Aragua organisation. In the case of the gangs, the US has been facing self-inflicted chaos in American cities, including New York.
Ms Machado's appeal is clear: to re-emerge "as a reliable partner of the US" to bring stability to the Latin American region and "to turn Venezuela from the criminal hub to the energy hub." She calls it a "win-win" for the United States and a free Venezuela.
John J Metzler is a United Nations correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He is the author of 'Divided Dynamism: The Diplomacy of Separated Nations: Germany, Korea, China'.