#venezuela

#venezuela

On January 3, 2026, Tim Stern, a German investor, was sleeping peacefully at his Venezuela residence when the phone on his small bedside table suddenly went wild. As he explained to Timothy Allen of the " Free Cities Podcast," calls streamed in immediately after news broke that the United States had bombed Caracas in the early hours of the morning. Within hours, it was clear that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro had been captured and was being sent to the United States - a change, Stern said in the podcast, that "is going to be the start of an absolute bonanza here in Venezuela."

Rather than triggering immediate elections as Venezuelan law, the Supreme Court declared Maduro's capture a absence, allowing Rodríguez to govern indefinitely without a popular mandate. "The regime used a legal mechanism to maintain institutional control while avoiding an immediate electoral process," Mauricio Vaquero, country coordinator for María Corina Machado's Vente Venezuela party in Colombia, tells The Cipher Brief. "The Supreme Court decided she would assume as interim president, but a Chavista Supreme Court, not the democratic legal one." In other words, the same loyalist judges who helped Maduro stay in power are now using constitutional loopholes to keep his inner circle in charge.

At the direction of the commander of U.S. Southern Command, Marine Gen. Francis L. Donovan, Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted three lethal kinetic strikes on three vessels operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations, Southern Command said in the statement, which as has become customary was accompanied by a video showing the boats exploding after being hit by a missile. Intelligence confirmed the vessels were transiting along known narco-trafficking routes and were engaged in narco-trafficking operations, it added.

It is an honour to stand here with you today and to be among the tremendous people of Venezuela, Wright said. He then proceeded to acknowledge the tensions in recent decades between the two countries. But Wright hinted at change under the Trump administration. He also indicated the US president would take a hemisphere-wide approach to his campaign slogan, Make America Great Again.

The only thing I could say is that there will not be an election in this immediate period of time where the stabilisation has to be achieved, Rodriguez replied. He explained that the decision is tied to a wider effort to rebuild and strengthen Venezuela's state institutions. What we're working on at the moment is what we call the re-institutionalisation of the country, so that every single institution of the country can again be brought to full power and full recognition by everybody, he said.

the country was willing to engage in dialogue with the United States, a dialogue on any topic, but without pressure or preconditions.

Shell is considering fossil fuel investments in Venezuela worth billions of dollars, according to its chief executive. Wael Sawan said Europe's largest oil company is weighing plans for production projects off the Venezuelan coast that could begin yielding gas in the next couple of years. These are opportunities that could potentially be activated within months, he told CNBC, adding that the company was now awaiting approvals.

"A fairly rapid change of a head of state prompted by U.S. military forces is always going to bring back memories of Iraq in one way or another," says Raad Alkadiri, a managing partner at 3TEN32 Associates, a political risk consultancy, who lived in Iraq from 2003 to 2007. But Alkadiri says there's a key difference, and that's the way the Trump administration is taking control of Venezuela's oil.

"Don't go!" more than one voice could be heard shouting in the packed Teatro Colón on January 24. The plea was in response to Colombian senator María José Pizarro Rodríguez's declaration that Colombia's President Gustavo Petro would be traveling to the White House on February 3 "in an act of courage." While the popular Pacto Histórico senator was mostly met with cheers and chants of the Chilean protest song, " El pueblo unido jamás será vencido,"

In the early morning hours of Saturday, January 3, the roar of bombs dropping from the sky announced the US military attack on Venezuela, waking the sleeping residents of La Carlota, in Caracas, a neighborhood adjacent to the air base that was a target of Operation Absolute Resolve. Marina G.'s first thought, as the floors, walls, and windows of her second-story apartment shook, was that it was an earthquake.

Although conciliatory, he reveals a persistent unease with a segment of the opposition that, he says, has judged him harshly. Capriles, an opposition leader, former mayor, former governor, and former presidential candidate, is concerned that the new political moment spoken of by interim president Delcy Rodriguez results in nothing more than an oil deal. He insists that without trustworthy institutions and freedoms, elections will change nothing.

Venezuelans are bracing for an uncertain future after the United States military abduction of President Nicolas Maduro. Reactions across the country have been sharply divided. Some are celebrating what they see as the end of an era while others have expressed fear and anger, accusing the US of trying to impose a government subordinate to Washington to secure access to Venezuela's oil reserves, the largest in the world.