Venezuela’s interim leader Delcy Rodriguez called on the U.S. to stop interfering in its internal affairs. “Enough with the orders,” she said during a public appearance during the weekend.
The remarks follow different reports noting that Rodriguez and other top regime officials agreed to cooperate with the Trump administration to remain in power.
The Guardian reported last week that Rodriguez and her brother Jorge secretly pledged to work with the U.S. if Nicolas Maduro was removed.
They added that his removal would be a welcome outcome. “She said, ‘I’ll work with whatever is the aftermath,'” a source detailed.
The outlet added that communications between the then-Vice President and U.S. officials through Qatari intermediaries began in the fall and continued after President Donald Trump urged Maduro to leave Venezuela in a phone call in November, a possibility he rejected.
All sources quoted by the outlet noted that the siblings offered to work with U.S. authorities if Maduro was removed but didn’t help to do so, clarifying that they did not collaborate to topple him.
Trump quickly announced that Delcy Rodriguez would be Venezuela’s interim president after the operation. He has since said the administrations are “getting along very well” and that she is “giving us everything that we feel is necessary.”
Trump told The New York Post earlier in January that his administration expects to maintain direct oversight of the government in Caracas for an extended period, noting that it will last “much longer than a year.” Trump also declined to set a specific timeline for the involvement, saying his government plans to extract and sell Venezuelan oil while providing funds back to the country.
In this context, Russia’s ambassador to Venezuela said the country knows the names of those who “betrayed” Maduro. Speaking to Rossiya-24, Serguei Melik-Bagdasarov said “local law enforcement agents didn’t do all they could” during the operation that took place on January 3.
He went on to say that actions that ended in the operations began before the raid, noting that “if what happened here long before this happened could be called treason, naturally it was.”
Originally published on Latin Times
