Natalie Kitroff

But there is an exception to all this, right?

Anatoly, Chevron, which is an American oil company, is still operating in Venezuela.

It is interesting, that piece of this, that on the one hand, U.S.

policy has been to put maximum pressure on the Maduro regime.

And yet on the other, they are kind of propping up the regime by allowing Chevron to give its oil back to the government.

Anatoly, before the break, you left us with a sense that it is really hard to know how all of this is going to play out.

But it seems clear from what you've said that the point of this campaign is to create pain inside of Venezuela.

So I want to turn to that.

I want to talk about the impact this is having inside the country.

How are Venezuelans feeling about it?

And how is the Maduro regime responding?

It could leave them worse off, actually.

And is the Trump administration's logic here that essentially by imposing what the president has called a blockade, by creating such terrible conditions inside Venezuela, the U.S.

either prompts an uprising by the Venezuelan people or Maduro just voluntarily leaves and gives up power?

Is that what they're after?

And what's your sense of whether that will actually work?

Because you, I know, are a student of Latin American history.

The U.S.

has been squeezing Maduro economically for years now.

And Cuba, for example, has been under a U.S.