US President Donald Trump said the United States captured President Nicolás Maduro and flew him out of Venezuela after a series of airstrikes, an extraordinary escalation in his 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 Nicolás Maduro, who has been, along with his wife, captured and flown out of the Country,” Trump wrote on social media.
Trump said there would be a press conference later Saturday at Mar-a-Lago, his estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
Capturing Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, 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 Gustavo Petro, who called for a United Nations Security Council meeting, while Trump allies including Argentina President Javier Milei celebrated the news.
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 organisation that represented a national security threat, while the US president has also made reference to the country’s vast oil reserves.
While few international companies operate in Venezuela because of US sanctions, Houston-based Chevron Cop. is a major partner to the country’s state oil producer, under a special licence from the Treasury Department. The company didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment sent outside business hours.
Trump has been assembling US military forces in the region for months, authorised attacks on alleged drug-running boats and orchestrated a blockade of sanctioned oil tankers going to and leaving Venezuela.
Some Democratic lawmakers took to social media to criticise 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 Ruben Gallego of Arizona. “There is no reason for us to be at war with Venezuela.”
Last month, Trump warned his campaign would “only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before.” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had called Venezuela’s cooperation with narco-traffickers and terrorists a direct threat to US national security.
US Senator Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, posted on X Saturday that Rubio said Maduro will stand trial on criminal charges in the US. Citing a phone conversation with the Secretary of State, Lee added that Rubio anticipates no further action in Venezuela.
European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas also said she spoke with Rubio on Venezuela and called for restraint, while reiterating the bloc’s view that Maduro lacks legitimacy.
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.
The first explosions in the capital were heard about 2a. 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 United States 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 mobilise in active solidarity in the face of this imperial aggression,” the government said in a statement.
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 US 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.
Attention now turns to opposition leader María Corina Machado, who is in an unknown location, and to her stand-in candidate in the 2024 presidential elections, Edmundo González Urrutia, widely seen as the winner based on a parallel vote count and currently exiled in Spain.
After her delayed appearance in Oslo to collect the Nobel Peace Prize in mid-December, Machado said she would return to hiding in Venezuela.
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.
by Derek Wallbank, Bloomberg
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