Updates: Trump boasts of abduction of Venezuela’s Maduro amid global outcry

For an analysis on how the abduction of Nicolas Maduro highlights both the influence and the limits of Marco Rubio in shaping US policy towards Venezuela, read this.

For an explainer on why Maduro called himself a “prisoner of war” during his first court appearance, read this.

Read more about how Trump’s abduction of Maduro has escalated concerns about a potential conflict with Iran, here.

This live page will close soon. Here’s a look at the day’s main developments:

• Members of the United Nations Security Council, including US allies, have condemned Washington’s abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
• The UN rights office has also voiced deep concern over the brazen US operation in Venezuela, warning that it clearly “undermined a fundamental principle of international law”.
• US President Donald Trump has praised the US operation, saying Maduro’s abduction was “brilliant”.
• Trump threatened further military action against Venezuela, as well as against Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who has dismissed the threat as “illegitimate”.
• Venezuela’s army has said that at least 24 soldiers were killed in the US attack on Caracas to abduct Maduro.
• The Cuban government has announced two days of mourning for 32 members of the country’s army, who were also killed in the US strikes on Venezuela over the weekend.
• Reports have emerged of Venezuelan and US ⁠officials discussing exporting Venezuelan oil to the United States, a top objective for Trump.

The US has been very blunt about why it invaded Venezuela: “You cannot continue to have the largest energy reserves in the world under the control of adversaries of the United States,” said the US ambassador to the UN, Michael Waltz.

We were just hearing from the foreign minister of Colombia, who was responding to what Donald Trump said… that the Colombian president, Gustavo Petro… has to watch out for himself.

He [Trump] said it in a slightly more vulgar manner, and then later on the next day, a reporter asked if there would be an operation in Colombia, and he said, “Sounds good to me”.

The Colombian government has been responding to that, saying that any insult to our president is an insult to the country.

The armoured vehicles behind me – they’re not about, primarily, any worry about US attacks; they are worried about the armed groups that sort of straddle this border, and they are worried in Colombia that they could launch an attack in protest about what has happened with Nicolas Maduro.

There is also a concern [about] if there will be a lot of refugees coming across the border from Venezuela.

But Colombia is definitely on alert, and it’s definitely taking very seriously the comments that Trump has been making about it, and other countries in the region – like Mexico, like Cuba – saying that the US might want to intervene there as well.

Gabriel Boric, the outgoing leftist president of Chile, who has consistently insisted on the need to apply international law to all countries equally, said in a social media post that leaders who try to flatter Trump in the face of US aggression “only humiliate themselves”.

“The leaders who pay homage to him and show themselves to be servile to US President Trump in an attempt to win his favour only humiliate themselves,” Boric said in a post on X.

“Trump [and his administration] not only permanently violates international law, but human dignity itself.”

Florida Republican Rick Scott has said that he spoke with Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who has been left with little to do as the Trump administration leans on Maduro’s officials to oversee governance in Venezuela in the leader’s absence.

In a TV interview earlier this week, Machado said she hoped to give her Nobel Peace Prize to the US president, after media reports that her acceptance of the prize had angered Trump, who had sought the prize for himself.

“I just got off the phone with Maria Corina Machado. She’s extremely grateful for POTUS’ [president of the US] bold action to hold Maduro and his thugs accountable and work to restore freedom and democracy in Venezuela,” Scott said in a social media post.

“Now we must get the political prisoners, including Americans, home and end the regime’s repression once and for all!” he added.

Former Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, speaking from exile in Miami, US, told Al Jazeera that Venezuela faces a potential turning point after Maduro’s abduction, describing it as “a wonderful and incredible opportunity” to restore the rule of law and revive the country.

Guaido, who fled Venezuela in 2023 after saying he feared arrest, said millions of Venezuelans were forced to leave the country under Maduro’s governance, and that rebuilding democracy could allow citizens to return and help “bring back to life the oil fields” and restore prosperity.

He criticised interim President Delcy Rodriguez, calling her “an acting dictator”, and said the opposition views the current period as “a phase of transition” that will only be complete “once the rule of law has been reinstalled”.

He added that international markets and the oil industry have “not given a vote of confidence” to the current leadership.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has not been shy about his desire to see the toppling of Venezuela’s Maduro.

Infamously, the former Florida senator even posted a series of photos of slain deposed leaders, including a bloodied former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, as tensions with the US and Maduro’s government spiked in 2019.

But it wasn’t until Trump’s second administration that Rubio’s vision of a hardline approach to Latin America and his longtime pressure campaign against leftist leaders was realised, culminating on Saturday with the illegal abduction of Maduro.

Experts say Rubio has relied on the ability to capitalise on the overlapping interests of competing actors within the Trump administration to achieve this, even as his broader ideological goals, including the ousting of Cuba’s communist government, will likely remain constrained by the administration’s competing ambitions.

“It took a tremendous amount of political skill on his part to marginalise other voices in the administration and elsewhere, who were saying, ‘This is not our conflict. This is not what we stand for. This is going to upset our base,’” Alejandro Velasco, an associate professor of history at New York University, told Al Jazeera.

Those agendas included Trump’s preoccupation with opening Venezuela’s nationalised oil industry, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s desire for a more pugilistic military approach abroad, and adviser Stephen Miller’s fixation on migration and mass deportation.

“So that’s the way that Rubio was able to bring into line not quite competing, but really divergent agendas, all of them to focus on Venezuela as a way to advance a particular end,” Velasco said.

Read more here.

The White House has said that Trump and his advisers are discussing a range of options for acquiring Greenland, including buying the territory from Denmark or forming a compact of free association with the island, according to senior US officials.

A White House statement said that “utilizing the US military is always an option”, adding that Trump considers acquiring Greenland a “national security priority” and would like to do so during his current term.

A senior official also said that the issue of the US acquiring Greenland “is not going away”, and that Trump remains eager to reach a deal despite objections from some NATO leaders.

At least 24 Venezuelan soldiers were killed in the US attack on Caracas to abduct President Nicolas Maduro, the country’s armed forces have said.

“In memory: 24 stars were torn from our Bolivarian firmament by the cowardly hand of the empire,” read a statement from the Venezuelan armed forces posted on Instagram, with photos of the deceased men and women published alongside the announcement.

The Venezuelan military refers to itself as the Bolivarian Army in memory of the South American freedom fighter Simon Bolivar.

A video tribute to the slain Venezuelan security officials posted to the military’s Instagram features faces of the fallen over black-and-white videos of soldiers, US aircraft flying over Caracas and armoured vehicles destroyed by the blasts.

“Their spilled blood does not cry out for vengeance, but for justice and strength,” the military wrote.

“It reaffirms our unwavering oath not to rest until we rescue our legitimate president, completely dismantle the terrorist groups operating from abroad, and ensure that events such as these never again sully our sovereign soil.”

Earlier, Cuba announced that 32 members of the Cuban security forces were killed during the US military’s operation over the weekend.

US Oil CEOs are expected to visit the ⁠White House as early as Thursday to discuss investments in Venezuela, ⁠according to three sources familiar with the planning.

The ‌details and timing of the meeting ‌are still ‌under discussion, one ⁠of the sources said, according to the Reuters news agency.

The meetings are crucial to the Trump administration’s hopes of getting top US oil companies back into the South American nation after its government, nearly two decades ago, took control of US-led energy operations there.

The French president downplayed suggestions that the US could seize Greenland, saying that he does not believe the US would violate the sovereignty of Denmark, a longtime US ally.

“I cannot imagine a scenario in which the United States of America would be placed in a position to violate Danish sovereignty,” Macron told the news outlet France 2. “Greenland is a territory under Danish sovereignty, and it will remain so,” he added.

On Monday, Trump aide Stephen Miller said that Greenland should be part of the US and that nobody would resist the US military over Greenland.

The vice president said in an interview on The Scott Jennings Show that when he was presented with details for the potential operation, “I think all of us were kind of sceptical, like can you actually do this, go into a foreign country, take zero dead Americans and actually, you know, take this indicted narcoterrorist, Nicholas Maduro?”

He said the operation was carried out “flawlessly.”

Vance said the abduction of Maduro will result in, among other things, cheaper petrol and energy for Americans.

“Most importantly, it’s going to mean that we have more control over the energy resources that exist in the world, to achieve better economic results for our people and to use those energy resources as leverage to achieve greater peace and prosperity,” Vance said.

Venezuelan and US ⁠officials are discussing exporting Venezuelan crude to the United States, five government, ⁠industry and shipping sources have reportedly told Reuters.

US refineries on the ‌Gulf Coast can process Venezuela’s crude and have imported ‌it in ‌the past, ⁠before the US imposed sanctions on Venezuela.

Earlier on Tuesday, the Trump administration dismissed analysts’ estimates that it would take years to ramp up Venezuela’s crude production.

Raising crude output from the South American nation, which sits on the world’s largest oil reserves, is a top objective for President Donald Trump after US forces abducted Venezuela’s leader, Nicolas Maduro, in a raid on its capital, ⁠Caracas, on Saturday.

US Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said one option was for Washington to lift sanctions on Venezuela that had prevented the country from accessing crucial oil field equipment and other technologies to maximise production.

“Some of these things could be done very quickly,” he told Fox Business Network in an interview. “The opportunity on the business side here is really enormous.”

The Cuban government has announced two days of mourning for 32 members of the country’s armed forces killed in US strikes on Venezuela over the weekend.

Among those reported killed were colonels, lieutenants, majors, captains, and reserve soldiers, who ranged in age between 26 and 60. Cuban state media reported that they were members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces and the Ministry of the Interior, the country’s two main security agencies.

“Our compatriots fulfilled their duty with dignity and heroism, falling after fierce resistance in direct combat against the attackers, or as a result of the bombing of the facilities,” an official statement said.

US Senator Lindsey Graham, a hawkish foreign policy figure and longtime supporter of US military intervention, has addressed criticism of the Trump administration’s approach towards Venezuela and said that elections can be held once the country is “stabilised” at an unspecified future time.

“To the wild Liberal media: President Trump and America are in charge of Venezuela for a good reason,” Graham said in a social media post.

“We are working with remnants of the Maduro regime to get an outcome that will build up the country and eventually allow for regime change – through the ballot box. There is no reason to have large amounts of American troops to achieve this goal as long as the current leadership works with the Trump Administration in this effort.

“The only regime change I’m looking for in Venezuela will come at the appropriate time, after the country has been stabilized and its people can change the regime through the ballot box with a free and fair election.”

Prime Minister Mark Carney says that Canada’s Indigenous governor general and foreign minister will visit Greenland in early February, a show of support for the self-governed Danish territory, which the US has insisted it will seize.

Foreign Minister Anita Anand and Governor General Mary Simon, who is of Inuk descent, are expected to open a consulate in Nuuk, Greenland’s capital. A large share of Greenland’s 56,000 people are of Inuit descent.

“The future of Greenland and Denmark are decided solely by the people of Denmark,” Carney said during a meeting with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen at Canada’s embassy in Paris.

Pedro Sanchez has said that the US abduction of Maduro was aimed at changing the leadership of the government and gaining greater control over the country’s energy resources.

“Spain never recognised the Maduro government because it broke the rules, because his election was illegitimate, and precisely for that reason it cannot recognise the legitimacy of a military action that is clearly illegal, that violates international law and whose sole objective seems to be none other than to change the government of another country to seize its natural resources,” Sanchez told reporters in Paris.

He added that the US attack sets a “terrible and very dangerous precedent”.

Some Venezuelans have taken to the streets in Caracas to condemn the US attacks and call for the return of Maduro.

Noris Argotte Soto, a Venezuelan reporter in Caracas, told Al Jazeera that most residents remain inside their homes and that the security situation in the capital city remains tense.

“In the peripheral areas of the city, everybody remains at home. The tension is rising; people are on edge. And people are very much afraid of going out into the streets, mostly because the security forces that we see at the main points of the city,” she said.

Soto said that government-aligned paramilitaries have been working alongside the military in recent days to maintain security and crack down on potential dissent.

“They were working yesterday with the security forces,” she noted. “They were basically bullying people, intimidating people, searching their cars, even demanding their cell phones to check their messages, check their social media.”