Maduro's presumed successor, Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, is possibly in Russia: report

04 Jan 2026 By foxnews

The presumed successor to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is currently in Russia, a report said Saturday.

Four sources familiar with the movements of Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez confirmed her location to Reuters, although the news agency cited Russia's foreign ministry as claiming the report was "fake."

Earlier in the day, Rodriguez demanded in audio played on Venezuelan state TV that the U.S. provide "proof of life" for Maduro and his wife after President Donald Trump said the pair had been captured in a U.S. military operation.

"We demand that President Donald Trump's government provide immediate proof of life for President Maduro and the First Lady," Rodriguez said, according to Reuters.

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Trump later shared to Truth Social a photo of Maduro seen detained, blindfolded and clutching a water bottle while wearing gray sweatpants and a sweatshirt aboard the U.S.S. Iwo Jima. Trump said he would later be brought to New York.

Maduro previously served as Venezuela's vice president before he took power in 2013 following the death of then-leader Hugo Chávez.

Jorge Rodriguez, who is Delcy's brother and is the head of Venezuela's national assembly, remains in Caracas, three sources told Reuters.

When asked about what the future of Venezuela holds with Maduro no longer in the country, Trump said in an interview on "Fox & Friends Weekend" that "we're making that decision now."

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"We can't take a chance of letting somebody else run and just take over where he left off. So we're making that decision now," Trump told Fox News. "We'll be involved in it very much, and we want to do liberty for the people. We want to, you know, have a great relationship. I think the people of Venezuela are very, very happy because they love the United States. You know, they were run by essentially a dictatorship or worse."

Trump later confirmed at a press conference in Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., that the U.S. would run Venezuela on a temporary basis.

The successors to Maduro are likely to be the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize winner and opposition leaders Maria Corina Machado and Edmundo González, an expert said Saturday.

Jorge Jraissati, a Venezuelan who is the president of the Economic Inclusion Group, told Fox News Digital that "Machado and Gonzalez would assume a transitional government in Venezuela.

Fox News' Rachel Wolf, Benjamin Weinthal and Efrat Lachter contributed to this report.