WASHINGTON (Sputnik) – The Venezuelan embassy in the United States, which had been under control of Juan Guaido since 2019, said it has ended its operations after the opposition leader’s “interim government” was dissolved.
“We inform the Venezuelan community in the United States, and the public in general, that the Venezuelan Embassy in the United States and all its officials formally ceased functions on Thursday, January 5, 2023,” the statement read on Friday.
Guaido associates captured the embassy in 2019 after the opposition-controlled National Assembly rejected the 2018 presidential election results and established an “interim government” led by Guaido.
On Monday, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said the government is prepared to advance the process of normalizing political and diplomatic relations with the United States.
Venezuela broke off diplomatic relations with the United States in 2019 after the latter recognized Guaido as the country’s interim president instead of the reelected Maduro. The United States imposed comprehensive sanctions on Caracas, especially targeting the country’s oil and financial industries as well as freezing its reserves.
At the height of tensions between Washington and Caracas in 2019, dozens of protesters occupied the Venezuelan embassy for weeks in an attempt to prevent the Guaido camp from taking possession of the building.
The occupation was carried out with the support of the democratically-elected government of Venezuela. At the time, the U.S. sought to place Carlos Vecchio, the ambassador appointed by Guaido, as the building’s new envoy.
With pro-Guaido supporters blocking supplies of food and water from getting into the building at the time, the dire situation even saw civil rights activists Jesse Jackson descend on the scene to assist the anti-war activists holed up inside the embassy.
Contacts between the Venezuela and the U.S. resumed to some extent in March 2022, when President Joe Biden sent a delegation to Caracas to negotiate with the Maduro government on the issue of oil supplies amid the energy crisis amplified by Western sanctions against Russia.
The oil-rich country began going through a downward spiral of poverty as well as social and developmental stagnation in 2018, when the West led by the U.S., and its favored Venezuelan opposition contested Maduro’s victory in the presidential election.
Following the election, Western countries began slapping Caracas with a slew of backbreaking sanctions, which have been responsible for spawning the dire economic situation in the country, with millions having fled Venezuela since the onset of the crisis.