A video posted by an official White House account on X shows Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro walking down a hallway at U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration headquarters on Jan. 3 after U.S. forces captured him in a raid.
Reuters
President Donald Trump says the U.S. will “run” Venezuela, including putting its oil infrastructure under the control of American companies, after U.S. forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife in an overnight military strike.
More than 150 U.S. fighter jets, bombers and helicopters descended on Caracas in the early hours of Saturday morning, where they attacked Mr. Maduro’s compound and whisked him away to face drug-trafficking charges in New York, the military said.
How exactly the U.S. plans to exercise control of the country remains unclear, with Mr. Maduro’s authoritarian allies continuing to hold power and making defiant statements against the attack.
The U.S. has captured Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro. Is that legal?
Carney hails ouster of Maduro in Venezuela but calls for respect for international law
Mr. Trump framed the toppling of Mr. Maduro as a return to a more interventionist U.S. foreign policy, including greater hegemony in the Western Hemisphere, amid criticisms of the legality of the move and the international precedent it could set.
“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Mr. Trump told reporters at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate, on Saturday. The President said “we’re not afraid of boots on the ground if we have to,” and that he was “ready to stage a second and much larger attack” if necessary.
U.S. President Donald Trump says that America will oversee Venezuela until a proper transition of power could take place. The U.S. captured Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro amid overnight military strikes on the country.
The Associated Press
Mr. Trump said U.S. oil companies will enter the country, which possesses the world’s largest proven reserves, and take “reimbursement” for expropriations by the socialist government, which has ruled the country under Mr. Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, since 1999.
“We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars to fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country,” Mr. Trump said. “We’re going to be taking a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground.”
The President also signalled that he was ready to jettison his once non-interventionist foreign policy in favour of using military force.
“The Monroe Doctrine is a big deal, but we’ve superseded it by a lot, by a real lot. They now call it the ‘Donroe Doctrine,’” Mr. Trump said, referring to the U.S.’s historic assertion of its primacy in the Americas. “American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.”
Since winning the 2024 election, Mr. Trump has called for the U.S. to annex Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal Zone, threatened to send American forces into Mexico to fight drug cartels and, on Saturday, would not rule out attacking Cuba.
Footage captures low-flying helicopters, explosions and columns of smoke in the Venezuelan capital Caracas in the early hours of Saturday.
Reuters
The President said that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had spoken at length to Delcy Rodríguez, Mr. Maduro’s vice-president, and that she was co-operating with the U.S., suggesting that the plan may be to try to govern through the current dictatorial regime.
Ms. Rodríguez, however, decried the attack as a “barbarity,” declared that Mr. Maduro is still legally Venezuela’s president and accused Mr. Trump of trying to colonize her country.
“This regime change would also allow for the seizure of our energy, mineral and natural resources. This is the true objective,” she said in a televised speech.
A photograph that U.S. President Donald Trump posted on his Truth Social account showing what he said was Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on board the USS Iwo Jima amphibious assault ship on Saturday.@realDonaldTrump/Reuters
Mr. Trump said his administration had not spoken with María Machado, Venezuela’s main opposition leader, because she “doesn’t have the support or the respect within the country.”
Mr. Maduro has been facing U.S. federal drug trafficking, terrorism and weapons charges since 2020. In a new indictment released Saturday, his wife, Cilia Flores, was also charged, along with four other people, including Mr. Maduro’s son and Diosdado Cabello, Venezuela’s interior minister and a key figure in the repression of dissent in the country.
Nicolás Maduro’s heavy-handed rule in Venezuela comes to an end with U.S. action
General Dan Caine, chairman of the U.S. joint chiefs of staff, said Saturday that Mr. Maduro and Ms. Flores were onboard the USS Iwo Jima bound for New York, where the indictment against them was filed.
The operation to capture him was planned for weeks, Gen. Caine said, with forces on standby, waiting for better weather conditions. At 10:46 p.m. ET on Friday, he said, Mr. Trump gave the go-ahead for what was dubbed Operation Absolute Resolve.
Miraflores Presidential Palace
U.S. STRIKES*
National Assembly
La Carlota Air Base
Cuartel de
la Montaña
CARACAS
Fuerte Tiuna
2km
Higuerote
Catia La Mar
TRINIDAD
& TOBAGO
Barquisimeto
Hatillo
Charallave
VENEZUELA
GUYANA
COLOMBIA
BRAZIL
200km
*According to Colombian president Gustavo Petro
graphic news
Miraflores Presidential Palace
U.S. STRIKES*
National Assembly
La Carlota Air Base
Cuartel de
la Montaña
CARACAS
Fuerte Tiuna
2km
Higuerote
Catia La Mar
TRINIDAD
& TOBAGO
Barquisimeto
Hatillo
Charallave
VENEZUELA
GUYANA
COLOMBIA
BRAZIL
200km
*According to Colombian president Gustavo Petro
graphic news
Miraflores Presidential Palace
U.S. STRIKES*
National Assembly
La Carlota Air Base
Cuartel de
la Montaña
CARACAS
Fuerte Tiuna
2km
Higuerote
Catia La Mar
TRINIDAD
& TOBAGO
Barquisimeto
Hatillo
Charallave
VENEZUELA
GUYANA
COLOMBIA
BRAZIL
200km
*According to Colombian president Gustavo Petro
graphic news
While U.S. jets attacked Venezuelan air defences and explosions rocked the city, helicopters flying 150 feet above the ground went to Mr. Maduro’s compound. Gen. Caine said they exchanged fire with Venezuelan forces and one U.S. aircraft was damaged, but no U.S. forces were killed and no equipment lost.
Mr. Maduro and his wife were captured at 2:01 a.m. local time, Gen. Caine said. Mr. Trump said the U.S. also turned off electricity to Caracas during the operation, but did not specify how.
An observer on the ground in Caracas said that whole neighbourhoods erupted in cheering in the early morning when the capture of Mr. Maduro was first announced. Some poorer parts of the city, meanwhile, were taken over by security forces and pro-government paramilitary groups.
Over the course of the day, there were long lines of people and cars at grocery stores and gas stations, but much of the city felt like a ghost town, the person said. People are afraid that another round of bombing may be imminent after Ms. Rodríguez’s speech.
The Globe and Mail is not naming the observer because they feared for their safety in the volatile political and military situation.
World leaders respond to U.S. strikes on Venezuela
Since September, the U.S. has been carrying out military strikes on alleged Venezuelan drug boats, sinking at least 36 craft and killing an estimated 115 people.
Mr. Trump has long used Venezuela as a political foil, pointing to Mr. Maduro’s brand of authoritarian socialism – and the political repression and economic disaster it has caused – as a warning against left-wing policies in the U.S.
More recently, he has blamed the country’s drug problems on Venezuelan drug smugglers and Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. At the same time, however, Mr. Trump has also tried to eject Venezuelan asylum seekers from the U.S. by stripping them of temporary protected status.
And last year, Mr. Trump pardoned former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, who was serving a 45-year prison sentence in the U.S. after being extradited and tried on charges of helping move cocaine into the country. Mr. Hernández is a conservative politician and Mr. Trump endorsed his political party in last year’s presidential elections.
The U.S. has a long history of interfering in Latin American politics. There was a particular parallel between Saturday’s operation and the invasion of Panama in 1989 and 1990. In that case, U.S. troops captured that country’s then-military dictator, Manuel Noriega, toppled his regime, and brought him to the U.S. to face drug-trafficking charges.
In a statement, the Mexican government on Saturday accused the U.S. of violating the United Nations charter by attacking another country’s territory. “Mexico urgently calls for the respect of international law,” the foreign ministry said in the statement, which warned that the attack “puts regional stability at grave risk.”
Brazilian President Lula da Silva wrote on X that the U.S.’s actions “represent a grave affront to the sovereignty of Venezuela and set an extremely dangerous precedent for the entire international community.”
The move comes amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and as China regularly threatens Taiwan.
Argentinian President Javier Milei, an ally of Mr. Trump’s, endorsed the attack on social media: “FREEDOM MOVES FORWARD,” he wrote.
Prime Minister Mark Carney noted that Canada has not recognized Mr. Maduro’s legitimacy since he rigged a 2018 election. “The Canadian government therefore welcomes the opportunity for freedom, democracy, peace, and prosperity for the Venezuelan people,” he said in a statement, which called for “a peaceful, negotiated, and Venezuelan-led transition” to democracy.
French President Emmanuel Macron called for Edmundo González Urrutia, an opposition politician widely believed to have defeated Mr. Maduro in the 2024 election, to be installed as president.
Some in Mr. Trump’s orbit, for their part, urged the President to go further in his new embrace of international interventionism.
Katie Miller, a conservative media personality and former Trump administration official, tweeted a drawing of Greenland covered with the stars and stripes of the U.S. flag. “SOON,” she wrote over the image. A self-governing territory of Denmark, Greenland has repeatedly rejected Mr. Trump’s overtures of annexation.
Ms. Miller, who is married to top Trump adviser Stephen Miller, also suggested on X that control of Venezuela’s oil reserves would allow the U.S. to end its free-trade deal with Canada, currently Washington’s top supplier. “The U.S. doesn’t need anything from Canada. Free trade is over,” she wrote.
Mr. Rubio, a Cuban-American, suggested at the Mar-a-Lago news conference that an attack on Cuba could also be a possibility. The communist-run island is a close ally of Mr. Maduro’s and has long been subject to U.S. sanctions. It was also famously the target of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, in which the U.S. backed anti-communist fighters in a bid to topple the Cuban government.
“If I lived in Havana and I was in government, I’d be concerned, at least, a little bit,” Mr. Rubio said.