US forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife in an early morning raid, sending him to the US to face criminal charges following a series of airstrikes that mark an extraordinary escalation in the Trump administration’s months-long campaign against the country.
“The United States of America has successfully carried out a large scale strike against Venezuela and its leader, President Nicolas Maduro, who has been, along with his wife, captured and flown out of the Country,” President
WATCH: The US launches airstrikes against Venezuela and captures President Nicolás Maduro and his wife. They have both been flown back to the US. Source: Bloomberg
US Attorney General Pam Bondi said on X that Maduro and his wife,
Trump said there would be a news conference at 11 am New York time at Mar-a-Lago, his estate in Palm Beach, Florida. In an interview with Fox News ahead of the briefing, Trump said Maduro had wanted to negotiate “at the end” but that he had decided that the US has “got to do it.” The US president said Maduro was on a US ship and being taken to New York.
The operation had been planned for four days ago but delayed due to bad weather, he said, adding that were “a few injuries” in the Venezuela operation but no deaths among US forces.
Capturing Maduro marks an unprecedented intervention and a stunning fall for the Venezuelan leader who became president in 2013. The strikes prompted condemnations from Maduro supporters including Russia’s foreign ministry and Colombian President
Maduro had already been the target of a US pressure campaign dating to Trump’s first term. The Trump administration has accused him of leading a drug-trafficking organization that represented a national security threat, while the US president has also made reference to the country’s vast oil reserves.
He reiterated his interest in Venezuelan energy Saturday, saying that the US is going to be “strongly involved” in the country’s oil industry.
Explainer:
“What can I say we have the greatest oil companies in the world, the biggest, the greatest, and we’re going to be very much involved in it,” Trump said in the Fox News interview.
‘Off Ramps’
Trump had offered Maduro “multiple off ramps” on the condition that “the drug trafficking must stop, and the stolen oil must be returned to the United States,” Vice President
Trump has been assembling American military forces in the region for months, authorized attacks on alleged drug-running boats and orchestrated a blockade of sanctioned oil tankers going to and leaving Venezuela.
WATCH: President Nicolás Maduro has been charged in the US after he was captured and flown out of Venezuela. Bloomberg’s Derek Wallbank explains. Source: Bloomberg
Last month, Trump warned his campaign would “only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before.” Secretary of State
Explainer:
Some Democratic lawmakers took to social media to criticize the military operation before the capture of Maduro had been announced.
“This war is illegal, it’s embarrassing that we went from the world cop to the world bully in less than one year,” said Senator
US Senator Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, posted on X Saturday that Rubio told him in a phone call that he anticipates no further action in Venezuela now that Maduro is in US custody.
European Union foreign policy chief
‘Aggression’ Condemned
The Russian Foreign Ministry condemned the US’s “act of armed aggression against Venezuela,” saying that it’s important to avoid further escalation. In a social media post, Colombia’s Petro rejected “the aggression against the sovereignty of Venezuela and of Latin America.”
“Internal conflicts between peoples are resolved by those same peoples in peace,” he wrote. “That is the principle of the self-determination of peoples, which forms the foundation of the United Nations system.”
WATCH: Video shows nighttime explosions in Venezuela. Source: Validated User Generated Content and AP)
The first explosions in the capital were heard about 2 a.m. local time and aircraft could be seen and heard overhead for hours, according to residents. Multiple explosions centered around the Fuerte Tiuna military base in Caracas.
The Venezuelan government said military and civilian targets had been hit across three states, adding that this marked an attempt by the US to seize the country’s oil resources. Unconfirmed video footage showed aircraft flying over Caracas and what appeared to be a barrage of missile strikes on targets in urban areas.
“We call upon the peoples and governments of Latin America, the Caribbean, and the world to mobilize in active solidarity in the face of this imperial aggression,” the government said in a statement.
‘Lethal, Powerful’
Trump detailed the mission in his Fox News interview Saturday, saying US forces had trained in a replica of the fortified home where they ultimately seized Maduro. The attack was ready four days earlier but delayed for weather, he said.
“All of the sudden it opened up, and we said go,” Trump recounted.
US forces “turned off almost all of the lights in Caracas” and eventually stormed the home, he said, which included a hardened area encased in steel that Trump called a “safety space.” The US president said that Maduro tried to make it into that space but didn’t reach it in time.
“This thing was so organized. And they go into a dark space with machine guns facing them all over the place,” he added.
Trump said the US was prepared for a “second wave” of strikes on targets but ultimately decided against it. “We were prepared to do a second wave, we were all set,” he said. “This was so lethal, this was so powerful that we didn’t have to.”
Trump declined to identify the US military unit behind the operation provided the soldiers and said there were no fatalities, although some personnel were “hit” and one helicopter damaged.
“We have things that nobody even knows about, nobody even has a clue about. And we don’t want to talk about that,” he said.
Oil Infrastructure
Venezuela’s oil infrastructure wasn’t affected after the US airstrikes, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The Jose port, Amuay refinery and oil areas in the Orinoco Belt are operational, said the people, who asked not to be identified discuss confidential information.
While few international companies operate in Venezuela because of US sanctions, Houston-based
While Venzuela has some of the world’s largest oil reserves, its role as a player in global markets has significantly declined following a precipitous output slump that began in 2015. It currently produces just shy of a million barrels a day — less than 1% of global output — most of which goes to China. Oil markets have been grappling with a hefty surplus that’s set to continue early this year, leaving room for the market to cope with any disruption to the country’s output.
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Maduro received a high-level Chinese delegation in Caracas on Friday, including Special Representative of the Chinese Government on Latin American Affairs Qiu Xiaoqi. It is unclear if the diplomats remained in the country by the time of the attack.
The American operation came on the anniversary of the day in 1990 that the Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega surrendered to US troops after seeking asylum in the Vatican embassy in Panama City. He was flown to Miami where he was tried and sentenced to prison.
Maduro’s departure could become a turning point for Venezuela and its people, who have spent years trying to oust him through elections widely disputed and marred by allegations of fraud and repression.
Opposition in Focus
Attention now turns to opposition leader
After her delayed appearance in Oslo to collect the Nobel Peace Prize in mid-December, Machado said she would return to hiding in Venezuela.
The US president said his administration was deciding the next steps on Venezuela and said he expected any Maduro loyalists still in the country to shift their allegiances.
“If they stay loyal, the future’s really bad, really bad for them,” Trump said on Fox News.
Asked whether he would back Machado to run the country, Trump added, “We’re going to have to look at it.”
Maduro’s presidency was marked by a prolonged political, social, and economic crisis. His government faced widespread accusations of authoritarianism, human-rights abuses, and suppression of dissent. During his tenure, Venezuela suffered hyperinflation, severe shortages of food and medicine, and the exodus of more than 8 million Venezuelans, one of the largest migration waves in the world.
Seizing Maduro after a series of airstrikes also stands in contrast to Trump’s repeated promise to end wars and not to start any new ones. The first 11 months of his term have seen the US carry out attacks against Iran, the Houthis in Yemen, and suspected Islamic State targets in Nigeria and Syria.
Trump had warned against such attacks, telling an audience in Saudi Arabia that “interventionists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves.”
“In recent years, far too many American presidents have been afflicted with the notion that it’s our job to look into the souls of foreign leaders and use US policy to dispense justice for their sins,” he said at the time.
--With assistance from
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Shiyin Chen, Wendy Benjaminson
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