“We are grateful for what Trump is doing for peace,” Machado, a Nobel laureate, tells the BBC.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Corina Machado told the BBC she was grateful for what US President Donald Trump was doing “all over the world for peace”.

Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader, won the 2025 award after waging a long campaign against the country’s president, Nicolas Maduro Moros, whose 12-year rule is considered by many to be illegitimate.

She told BBC Mundo that during a congratulatory phone call with Trump she told him “how grateful the Venezuelan people are for what they are doing, not just in the Americas, but around the world for peace, freedom and democracy.”

Trump did not hide his desire to win the award himself, and he regularly spoke about the award Seven wars he claims are over.

Nominations for the award closed in January, with the start of Trump’s second term as president. A A White House official said Friday “The Nobel Committee has proven that it puts politics before peace.”

Machado said she was “very happy” to speak with the US President and was able to “convey to him our appreciation.”

The Nobel Committee praised the 58-year-old, who was forced to live in hiding for most of last year, as “one of the most extraordinary examples of civil courage in Latin America in recent times.”

Nobel Prize President Jürgen Watney-Friednes said she was recognized “for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”

He added: “Despite serious threats against her life, she remained in the country, a choice that inspired millions.”

Machado was banned from running in last year’s presidential elections, in which Maduro won a third six-year term.

The elections were widely dismissed internationally as neither free nor fair, and sparked protests across the country.

Even after being banned from the ballot box, she managed to unite the notoriously divided opposition faction and succeeded in pushing millions of Venezuelans behind the little-known candidate who replaced her on the ballot, Edmundo Gonzalez.

When the government-controlled National Electoral Council declared Maduro the winner – even though polling station statistics showed Gonzalez won by a landslide – Machado continued to campaign from hiding, where Maduro’s government repeatedly threatened her with arrest.

Machado told BBC Mundo that her award was an “injection” for her political movement.

“It infuses energy, hope and strength into the Venezuelan people because we realize that we are not alone,” she added. “Democrats around the world are joining us in our struggle.”

She said she believes Trump and the international community are already helping the political situation in Venezuela.

“The regime in Venezuela is a criminal structure,” Machado told the BBC. “Therefore, it relies on criminal flows generated from its illicit activities.

“We need the international community to stop these flows, which are used not only for corruption, but also for repression, violence and terrorism.

He added: “So when you cut off the flows coming from drug smuggling, gold smuggling, arms smuggling, human trafficking or the oil black market, the regime falls.

“And that’s exactly what we’re seeing, the cracks that are getting deeper and deeper as we speak now.”

Earlier this month, US forces killed four people in an attack on a boat off the coast of Venezuela that was allegedly smuggling drugs.

This is the latest in a number of recent strikes launched by the United States on boats in international waters that it said were involved in “drug smuggling.”

It has drawn condemnation in countries such as Venezuela and Colombia, where some international lawyers have described the strikes as a violation of international law.

Thursday Colombian President Gustavo Petro said that one of the boats It was “Colombia with Colombian nationals inside,” an allegation the White House called “baseless.”