Nicolás Maduro

On January 3, 2026, in a lightning raid on Caracas called Operation Absolute Resolve, U.S. troops took Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, prisoner. This ended Maduro's nearly 12-year rule. The Trump administration, which had long accused Maduro of running the "Cartel of the Suns" and committing crimes against humanity, brought the couple to the U.S. to face federal charges of cocaine trafficking and narco-terrorism in New York. The operation killed a lot of Maduro's close security guards and drew a lot of criticism for violating international sovereignty. However, it came after a year of rising tensions during which the 2024 elections were condemned around the world as rigged. During this time, opposition leader María Corina Machado gained international attention when she won the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize for her fight for democracy. However, recent reports say that she and President Trump are not on good terms because she accepted the award. After the capture, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez took the oath of office as interim president on January 5, 2026. Even though she has spoken out against "U.S. aggression," she has been in high-stakes talks with Washington about the future of Venezuela's oil infrastructure. While the world watches Maduro's trial in a Manhattan court, Venezuela is still in a dangerous state of transition, trying to balance the possibility of economic reintegration through U.S. oil investment with the fact that the country is still politically unstable.

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