US-Backed Opposition Leader Secretly Whisked Out Of Venezuela, Appears In Oslo To Urge Regime Change

As the main opposition figurehead and rival to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, she’s reportedly been in hiding for many months. María Corina Machado hasn’t appeared in public for nearly a year, after she was briefly detained all the way back on Jan. 9 in Caracas.

Fearing another arrest where she could go away to prison for good, Machado has avoided public political or or protest events, even as her star was rising internationally with her being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

But there are reports she was safely whisked out of the country while Caracas authorities were distracted and preoccupied with Wednesday’s US seizure of a Venezuelan oil tanker.

After this, Machado popped up in Oslo, Norway – where she announced while appearing on a hotel balcony that many people had “risked their lives” to get her there. “I am very grateful to them, and this is a measure of what this recognition means to the Venezuelan people,” she said. The purported details sound straight out of a Hollywood movie:

The Wall Street Journal, though, said she wore a wig and a disguise when she began her journey on Monday. First, she left her hideout in a Caracas suburb where she had been living for nearly a year, heading for a coastal fishing village.

Two people helped her flee. The trio passed 10 military checkpoints, avoiding capture each time, on a nerve-wracking 10-hour trip, before reaching the coast around midnight, the newspaper said. They then began a perilous trip across the open Caribbean Sea to Curacao in an open wooden fishing skiff.

According to the WSJ, the US military was informed of her crossing, to avoid the boat being targeted by airstrikes. Machado confirmed on Thursday that she had US support.

“Machado arrived in Curacao around 3:00 pm (1900 GMT) on Tuesday. She was met by a private contractor who specializes in extractions and was supplied by the Trump administration,” according to the WSJ account.

Her daughter, Ana Corina Sosa, had accepted the Nobel Prize in her place as she had missed the award ceremony – apparently by a mere hours. But Thursday’s appearance can be thought of as her post-award press conference.

To be expected, she used the opportunity to again call for regime change in her own country, calling it a “criminal hub”. She’s calling on the international community to intervene and “cut those sources.”

“The regime is using the resources — the cash flows that come from illegal activities, including the black market of oil — not to give food for hungry children, not for teachers who earn $1 a day, not to hospitals in Venezuela that do not have medicine or water, not for security. They use those resources to repress and persecute our people,” she said.

The 2025 peace laureate Maria Corina Machado arrived safely in Oslo, Norway in the early morning of 11 December.

It was the first time in two years that she was able to embrace her daughter Ana (depicted in the first image) and the rest of her family. She was welcomed by an… pic.twitter.com/YnDmgF6aQt

— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) December 11, 2025

And the mainstream media is fawning over her, with the NY Times hailing her as the “de facto spokeswoman for democracy in Venezuela.” But given the US military is parked just off Venezuela’s coast, this all seems less some kind of organic democratic uprising and much more obviously a brazen Washington orchestrated regime change op.

As an example of her own regime change rhetoric, geared toward the overthrow of President Maduro:

Reporter: Would you welcome a U.S. military intervention in Venezuela? 

Machado: Venezuela has been already invaded. We have the Russian agents, we have the Iranian agents. We have terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, operating freely in accordance with the regime.

She’s of course giving the neocons and hawks what they want to hear, as this narrative of “Middle Easts terrorists” setting up shop in Venezuela has long been a talking point among Republicans especially. But evidence is thin to non-existent, and exists more in the imaginations of 24/7 Fox News consumers.

Machado also expressed support for the US military intercepting and seizing Venezuelan oil tankers, and sanctioning her country:

Mr. Maduro’s largest corporate partner is Chevron, the American energy company, which has continued to export Venezuelan oil to the United States despite Mr. Trump’s military escalation.

In response to questions about the seizure of the oil tanker, Ms. Machado said that she supported cutting the funds of Mr. Maduro’s government. She added that he finances himself with gold smuggling, human trafficking, drugs and illegal oil sales.

Just like the US-led regime change playbook says…

NOW – Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Corina Machado: “We will turn Venezuela into that energy, technological, and democracy hub of the Americas… we will host all of you in a bright, democratic, and free country, and it’s going to be soon.” pic.twitter.com/aRIP1psbLj

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) December 11, 2025

Machado outside her hotel in Oslo smiles while crowds chanted “President! President!” She declared, “I want you all back in Venezuela.” She may soon get her wish in the country with the world’s largest proven oil reserves.

Her daughter has promised that “she will be back in Venezuela very soon.” Machado has said it is her “duty” to return to Venezuela with her Nobel award, and she’s willing to do so whether or not Maduro remains in power.

Meanwhile, there has actually been some local opposition to the oppositionist evident on the streets of Norway…

Norwegian peace groups demonstrate in Oslo against the Nobel Prize award to rabid warmonger, coup plotter and corporate front woman Maria Corina Machado pic.twitter.com/JelS2HW69P

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) December 10, 2025

Indeed many are not buying this carefully curated narrative: “We know that our regime is supporting itself thanks to other authoritarian regimes. We need the support of all democracies in the world,” Machado said. “That’s why we are certainly asking the world to act.” Iraq, Libya, Syria 2.0 coming?