Explosions lighting up the night sky. Panic in the streets. A president claiming victory before dawn. On the first Saturday of 2026, Venezuela was thrust into chaos after President Donald Trump announced that Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, had been captured in a large-scale US military operation.
The dramatic claim, delivered not in a formal address but via social media, came just hours after a series of airstrikes rocked the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, and surrounding regions. What unfolded was a moment of grave international jeopardy: a sitting US president boasting of regime change, a Latin American nation under bombardment, and allies and adversaries rushing to condemn what they labelled an attack on sovereignty and international law.
