MINSK – Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko marked Venezuela’s Independence Day on Sunday by congratulating Acting President Delcy Rodriguez and making explicit what Minsk’s position is on Nicolas Maduro’s detention: it wants the Venezuelan president home as soon as possible.
“We welcome the consistent efforts of the government headed by you to preserve peace, constitutional order and the earliest possible return to the homeland of President Nicolas Maduro Moros and his wife Cilia Flores,” the congratulatory message read, as quoted by Lukashenko’s office.
Maduro has been held in New York since January 3, when the United States launched a large-scale operation in Venezuela during which Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores were detained and transported to the United States. President Donald Trump said both would face trial over alleged involvement in narco-terrorism. Both Maduro and Flores pleaded not guilty to the charges in a New York court, as Al Jazeera reported from the courthouse.
Rodriguez, serving as acting president since Maduro’s detention, received the message as Venezuela marked 215 years of independence from Spanish colonial rule. Lukashenko invoked Simon Bolivar, Francisco de Miranda, and former President Hugo Chavez as figures who built the foundation of Venezuelan sovereignty, a rhetorical frame that places the current government in a line of resistance to external interference.
The congratulation described bilateral relations as demonstrating “ideological resilience” and told Caracas it could count on Minsk. Belarus has maintained close diplomatic alignment with Venezuela throughout the Maduro years. Lukashenko himself faces ongoing international sanctions and has not been recognized as a legitimate president by multiple Western governments since the disputed 2020 Belarusian elections. The alignment between the two governments reflects both shared ideological positioning and the practical solidarity of states on the same side of the same Western pressure framework. Trump and Putin spoke by phone on Saturday for the 14th time in 18 months, underscoring how far US-Russia tensions extend across every major geopolitical fault line. What Venezuela’s government will do with that solidarity while its president remains in US custody is a question Minsk’s congratulations do not resolve.
