'Most delicate operation': Venezuelan leader Machado received US help in escaping to Oslo? What we know

Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel laureate Maria Corina Machado was helped by a US special forces in her riskiest escape from the country. US special forces veteran, whose team helped her, has urged her not to return, following a dangerous rescue mission that lasted nearly 16 hours and was carried out mostly at night through rough waters. Grey Bull Rescue Foundation founder Bryan Stern said that the mission was the most complex his team has ever undertaken. Machado, who escaped to Oslo in Norway, has ensured that she will return to her country, despite knowing the risk of it.

“Overwhelmingly, this is the hardest, most high profile, most delicate operation we’ve conducted,” Stern told CNN. According to him, Machado boarded a boat from the Venezuelan coast that sailed to a rendezvous point at sea, where she met Stern on another vessel. She transferred to the second boat by Tuesday night and was taken to a different location. He also said that Venezuelan, Cuban and Russian intelligence services had been searching for Machado for months. “Because of her face, because of her signature… it made this operation significantly more high risk than we’ve ever done before,” he said.

Machado made her first public appearance in almost a year and waved to supporters from the balcony of her Oslo hotel on Thursday. The Nobel laureate was last seen in public on January 9 when she protested Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro's inauguration for his third term.

Maria Corina Machado, also known as “Iron Lady of Venezuela”, was awarded 2025 Nobel Peace Prize for her “tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.” She has fought in Venezuela against the government of both Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro. She won the opposition's primary election in 2023 but was barred by the Venezuelan government from running for president in the 2024 election. However, she also faces widespread criticism for allegedly supporting the Trump administration's military buildup in the Caribbean against alleged Venezuelan drug-boats and Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu's Gaza war.