Nobel

Maria Corina Machado gave Trump her Nobel Peace Prize after the US leader captured Nicolas Maduro.

Venezuela’s main opposition leader Maria Corina Machado says she has “no regrets” about giving US President Donald Trump her Nobel Peace Prize medal.

Machado, the 2025 recipient of the prestigious prize, presented the medal that accompanies the prize to Trump when she met him at the White House in January, two weeks after he ordered US special forces to seize Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from Caracas.

Trump’s military operation to remove Maduro, who is currently detained in the US facing drug trafficking charges, is “something we Venezuelans will never forget”, she was quoted by AFP news agency as saying at a conference in Madrid on Saturday.

“There is a leader in the world, a head of state in the world, who risked the lives of his country’s citizens for Venezuela’s freedom,” she said.

Trump, who has long publicly coveted the Nobel Peace Prize, called Machado’s presentation of the medal at the time a “wonderful gesture of mutual respect”.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee, which honoured Machado for her tireless campaign to restore democratic rights in Venezuela and her struggle to achieve a peaceful transition from authoritarian rule, made clear after the handover that the prize is nontransferable and cannot be revoked, shared or transferred to others.

Machado, who had been living in hiding before leaving Venezuela in December to collect her prize in Oslo, said she was coordinating her return to the country with Washington.

US key to ‘democratic transition’

“I am speaking with the US government, and we are working in coordination, with mutual respect and understanding,” she said, adding that she believed Washington was “key to advancing a democratic transition” in Venezuela.

Trump has, however, publicly questioned Machado’s standing, calling her a “very nice woman” but saying she lacks “respect” within Venezuela. He has instead backed Maduro’s former vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, as the country’s interim leader.

Venezuela’s opposition last week called for presidential elections. Machado, who was banned from running in the disputed 2024 vote that returned Maduro to power, has not yet said whether she would stand in a future poll.

While in Spain, Machado declined a meeting with Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, citing his hosting of a progressive leaders’ summit in Barcelona as proof the meeting was “not advisable”. Sanchez had said he was willing to meet her at any time.

This snub comes in contrast to her frequent encounters with Sanchez’s right-wing opponents.

Memorial was co-winner of 2022 Peace Prize for its work in documenting human rights abuses in Russia.

The committee that awards the Nobel Peace Prize has condemned attempts by Moscow to designate the human rights group and Peace Prize laureate Memorial as an “extremist organisation”.

The chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Jorgen Watne Frydnes, said in a statement on Wednesday that it was “deeply alarmed by the Russian authorities’ latest attempts to destroy Memorial – a co-recipient of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize – by seeking to designate [it] as an extremist organisation”.

The statement was issued as Russia’s Supreme Court is expected to examine a petition from the Ministry of Justice on Thursday to add Memorial to Russia’s list of “undesirable” entities.

The designation would ban the organisation from operating in Russia, with those affiliated with it could face up to four years in prison and fines.

Memorial has already been declared a “foreign agent”, and the Supreme Court ordered it dissolved in Russia at the end of 2021.

Frydnes stressed that if the latest petition by the Justice Ministry is upheld, “all activities of Memorial will be criminalised. Anyone taking part in, or funding, Memorial’s work – or even sharing its published materials – will risk imprisonment.”

“To designate such an organisation as extremist is an affront to the fundamental values of human dignity and freedom of expression,” he added.

The committee called “on the Russian authorities to immediately withdraw this claim and to cease all harassment of Memorial and its members”.

Memorial won the Nobel Peace Prize with the Ukrainian human rights organisation Centre for Civil Liberties and Ales Bialiatski, who has worked to promote democracy and human rights in Belarus. Memorial, established in 1987, focuses on documenting human rights abuses in Russia.

Before it was banned in Russia, Memorial formed a network of about 50 organisations across Russia and outside its borders. Some of its constituents based in Germany, France and Italy continue to operate.

Several Russian Memorial leaders have been subjected to criminal proceedings – including Oleg Orlov, who was freed in a prisoner exchange in 2024 after being imprisoned for speaking out against the Ukraine war – are now working outside Russia to continue documenting human rights abuses.