Venezuela’s best-known opposition leader, the Nobel peace prize winner María Corina Machado, has said she supports the US seizure of an oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast, calling it a “very necessary step” to confront Nicolás Maduro’s “criminal” regime.
Speaking in Oslo on Thursday, a day after she was honoured for her “tireless” struggle for democratic change, Machado praised the US navy and coastguard helicopter raid on the vessel.
Machado said the huge oil wealth of Venezuela – which has the world’s largest proven reserves – had not been used by Maduro’s dictatorship to fund hospitals or feed impoverished teachers or improve security. Rather, his regime had used it to buy weapons that were used to repress its opponents. “So yes, these criminals have to be stopped and cutting the resources of illegal activities is a very necessary step,” Machado told reporters.
Earlier in the day, Machado said her arrival in Oslo marked a “historic turning point” that showed Venezuelans “the world is with them”.
Machado, who was forced into hiding in Venezuela by Maduro, slipped out of her authoritarian homeland by boat in order to travel to Norway to collect her prize.
Venezuelan authorities “would have done everything they could” to stop her if they had known where she was hiding, she said on Thursday.
Speaking at the Norwegian parliament, the Storting, a few hours after making a dramatic 2.30am appearance to greet supporters from a balcony at the Grand hotel in Oslo and an emotional reunion with her family, Machado thanked those who had “risked their lives so that I can be here today”.
Standing alongside the Norwegian prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, she said: “I don’t think the authorities knew where I was. And it’s quite clear that they would have done everything they could to stop me from coming here.” She added: “I want to thank all those who have risked their lives so that I can be here today.
“I would say to all citizens of the world in this hour and assure you that I am very hopeful Venezuela will be free and we will turn a country into a beacon of hope and opportunity, of democracy.”
Machado, who had not seen her children for nearly two years before arriving in Oslo, said she had been unable to sleep trying to decide what she would do in the “first instant that I saw my children”.
“For many weeks I had been thinking of that possibility, which one of them I would hug first … I hugged the three of them at the same time. It’s been one of the most extraordinary spiritual moments of my life and it happened in Oslo so I’m very grateful to this city. Something I will never forget.”
She was, she said, one of millions of mothers “longing to embrace our children”, adding: “That brings us together.”
Machado said she would have liked to visit several countries while she was in Europe, but that she planned to go straight back to Venezuela where she would remain in hiding. “When I return, the regime will not know where I am. We have people to take care of me and the places I stay,” she said.
Hours earlier, the politician and pro-democracy activist marked her arrival in Oslo by stepping out on to the balcony of the Grand just before 2.30am local time.
Dozens of supporters chanted “Courageous!” and “Freedom!” in front of the hotel and sang the Venezuelan national anthem as she appeared. “Glory to the brave nation, which shook off the yoke!” they cried out.
It was Machado’s first public appearance in almost a year, after the July 2024 presidential election, which Maduro was accused of stealing.
Minutes after appearing on the balcony outside the hotel’s storied Nobel suite, the 58-year-old conservative came down on to the street and climbed over metal barricades to embrace supporters, who had gathered outside the 19th-century building’s glimmering facade.
At a press conference later on Thursday, she said: “Peace is a declaration of love. And that’s what brought me here.”
Asked whether she supports US military intervention in Venezuela, she said the country had already been invaded. “We have Iranian agents, and terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, who operate together with the regime.” Drug cartels had, she said, “made Venezuela a criminal centre”.
In a 4am interview with the Norwegian broadcaster NRK, Machado, who does not have a passport, said she had been travelling for nearly two days. “It is very, very difficult and very dangerous to leave Venezuela if you are persecuted by the regime,” she said.
To be reunited with her family, she said, was “very emotional”. “I haven’t seen my children for almost two years. My mother had to leave too, so I haven’t seen her for 16 months. Or my husband, or my sisters, or my friends, or my colleagues.”
¡Oslo, aquí estoy! pic.twitter.com/tsixUerj0q
— María Corina Machado (@MariaCorinaYA) December 11, 2025
Hours earlier, on Wednesday, the Nobel laureate’s 34-year-old daughter, Ana Corina Sosa Machado, accepted the Nobel peace prize on her mother’s behalf after she failed to arrive in Oslo in time for the ceremony.
Speaking at that event, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel committee, Jørgen Watne Frydnes, urged Maduro to step down, having lost last year’s presidential election to Machado’s ally, Edmundo González. “Let a new age dawn,” Frydnes said, hailing Machado’s “struggle to achieve a peaceful and just transition from dictatorship to democracy” in Venezuela.
Numerous past Nobel laureates have been unable to collect their awards in Oslo because of the political situation in their home countries, among them the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, the Burmese politician and activist Aung San Suu Kyi and the Polish unionist and future president Lech Wałęsa.
Members of Maduro’s regime denounced Machado’s award, with the vice-president, Delcy Rodríguez, describing the Nobel ceremony as “a total failure” that her adversary had failed to attend. “They say she was scared,” Rodríguez added, claiming the 2025 Nobel prize was “stained with blood”.
Maduro, speaking at a rally in Caracas, urged the Trump administration – which has spent recent months trying to topple his government – to cease its “illegal and brutal interventionism”. He said citizens should be ready “to smash the teeth of the North American empire if necessary”.
Machado appears well placed to lead Venezuela if Trump succeeds in forcing Maduro from power. But Maduro’s downfall is far from certain – he rode out the US president’s 2019 “maximum pressure” campaign to topple him with a combination of sanctions and threats. Some observers suspect the Venezuelan strongman will survive Trump’s latest intervention.
