Meeting of the Russian Public Committee for the Release of President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela Nicolás Maduro

Sovetskaya Rossiya, April 6, 2026 —

Massages By Participants:

L.G. Baranova- Gochenko, Advisor to the Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Secretary of the Union of Writers of Russia, Honored Worker of Culture of the Russian Federation:

Moral support for Nicolas Maduro!

“We are pleased to welcome you to this hall, which has seen much in its time. But perhaps today is a special occasion, a special gathering—one of solidarity. And although it is connected to a tragic date, our presence here adds to our optimism.”

Today marks exactly three months since the pirate capture of the legitimate President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores.

We are the Committee for the Defense of Nicolás Maduro, created with the participation of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the public movement “Russian Lad,” and the movement “Russian Scientists for Socialism.” Today, we were at the Venezuelan embassy, ​​where we attended a screening of a film dedicated to Nicolás Maduro.

Today we’ll get to know each other, listen to each other, and watch this film. It’s not an ordinary film. It’s somewhat unusual in both format and style. But it captures the most important thing: the spirit of Latin American resistance.

I’d like to say a few words to continue the theme of solidarity. When we first discussed this topic at the TASS press conference, I spoke primarily about solidarity, in the sense that we need to give life to this word. Of course, we are very grateful to our Venezuelan brothers and comrades for our assistance, but first and foremost, I believe, it is they who are helping us.

They help us awaken our half-asleep civil society, and especially our slumbering younger generation, which doesn’t yet know what solidarity is. We lived through a period of history that taught us something, and we always shudder, always empathize. This very empathy and this shudder at the misfortune of others must be brought into our society. Because the new generation increasingly knows what cashback is, but they don’t know what solidarity is. And solidarity is the number one issue in our society.

A few days ago, we held a videoconference with the “Russian Way” movement, where we addressed our regional organizations, following a request made to us by the Venezuelan Embassy. This request was so human, so interesting, so simple, and it’s important to keep it in mind. We asked our movement members to write letters to Nicolás Maduro. These letters will reach him one way or another and will, of course, be a tremendous source of moral support.

 

D.G. Novokov, Deputy Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs:

The Venezuelan leadership’s policies have provoked the burning hatred of American imperialism.

Good afternoon, esteemed comrades! There are two things I’d like to do right now. First, I’d like to convey greetings on behalf of Gennady Andreyevich Zyuganov to all participants of our meeting today. You all know well that the leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation is not only actively involved in supporting our committee—the Committee for the Freeing of Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores—but was also, in many ways, the initiator of its creation. Gennady Zyuganov not only heads our party and its faction in the State Duma, but also the governing body of the “Russian Way” movement, which was the first to initiate the creation of this kind of public association.

Secondly, I want to thank the participants in this work. I thank them not because we’ve achieved some final result to date, as it was impossible to achieve in such a short period of time. It’s clear that American imperialism didn’t act as it did at the beginning of this year only to quickly surrender its position.

It’s crystal clear to us that the sham trial of Nicolás Maduro will be a long story. Therefore, one of our most important tasks is to expose and expose the vulgarity of this pseudo-legal activity, the cynicism of American imperialism. I believe there will be plenty of grounds for such conclusions and examples.

Nevertheless, I believe we have achieved some interim results, and today confirmed that. I received three calls from journalists from various publications. I had to comment on our upcoming meeting in advance on Radio RBC. And you know, the initial hesitation that some of the journalistic community had about what this committee could do and whether it was even worth pursuing—that hesitation has gone away. All the questions were to the point. The questions were substantive. The questions were engaging.

And I think this is logical. Because while some might have had some illusions in January that life in Russia was self-sustaining, and global processes were self-sustaining, now, when the United States of America has launched an aggression, started a war in Iran—which, generally speaking, is very close to our borders—to harbor any illusions that there’s some global process, and that we, here in our little corner, will survive it all and everything will be fine, even despite the conflict with Ukraine, is a grave mistake.

Therefore, in these circumstances—when the global situation is becoming more complex, when various political forces are entering into conflict, much will depend on everyone. It’s clear that presidents have different opportunities than ordinary citizens, but we nevertheless insist, during our meetings and press conferences, that this kind of solidarity struggle is important and has repeatedly led to concrete results. We have cited the examples of Georgi Dimitrov and Nelson Mandela in this regard, and, of course, we very much hope that our current struggle will also lead to the desired result.

The first and most important thing we must do is to properly inform the citizens of our own country about the work we are doing and who these people are whose release we are advocating for.

Nicolás Maduro is a fairly well-known figure in our country, but unfortunately, most citizens know him only superficially. Our people can usually recall two things: the first is that Nicolás Maduro is the President of Venezuela, and the second is that he is the heir to Hugo Chávez. A slightly more informed audience might say that Maduro is not only the President of Venezuela, but also the leader of the country’s ruling Socialist Unity Party. And, generally speaking, that’s the extent of many of our fellow citizens’ understanding. However, simply stating that Nicolás Maduro is the heir to Hugo Chávez is not enough.

It’s also not enough to say that Cilia Flores is Nicolás Maduro’s wife. I.N. Makarov, L.G. Baranova-Gonchenko, and I recently visited the Venezuelan Embassy and discussed this with the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. He emphasized that Cilia Flores is an independent, self-sufficient political figure in her country. She has come a long way: first as a lawyer, then as the country’s attorney general, and today she is a member of the National Assembly of Venezuela, an active participant in the political life of the Bolivarian Republic. Therefore, we are talking about two political prisoners from Venezuela – Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores.

And, of course, having a clear political and ideological position on the unacceptability of such barbaric actions as the kidnapping of heads of state, we must, in my opinion, help the citizens of our country better understand Nicolás Maduro, his predecessors, and his associates. They must learn about the work they carried out in Venezuela and why their actions provoked such intense hatred in the United States. And why the United States chose this method of aggression rather than armed intervention, where the Venezuelan population, with its own self-organizing institutions, could have mounted significant resistance—though not as much as in Iran, given Venezuela’s military capabilities, but certainly not a cakewalk for the United States. That’s precisely why Washington adopted this course of action against the Venezuelan leader.

And here’s something else I’d like to say today. I think our conversation today, today’s meeting, which Larisa Georgievna opened, and the screening of the film we’re about to watch will help us gain additional support for our future outreach efforts. And that’s what’s most important to us right now.

And one more thing. I think a number of important points have been made here. There’s a strong sense in Russian society that the fight against American imperialism is insufficient. Many people are talking about this. And when we talk about this, we must understand that the reason for our current relative impotence is not only connected to the disarmament of a large country called the USSR.

It wasn’t just a large country. And it wasn’t by chance that it was called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Its ability to seriously limit the actions of American imperialism—for example, during the Cuban Missile Crisis—was determined not so much by the country’s geographic size, but by its socialist character, the socialist character of Soviet society, which enabled it to address the phenomenal challenges of social, political, and economic development. Hence its global influence and the ability to accomplish colossal tasks.

In the more than three decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union, we’ve witnessed three transformations in the ruling class’s propaganda line. If we take the 1990s, it was pure anti-communism. Hence the betrayal of our traditional allies, claiming they were socialist; that’s not the direction we need to go now, and a continuous denigration of the Soviet Union.

Then, with the advent of the current century, the propaganda vector shifted. Popular sentiment forced the ruling party to adjust its political demagoguery and the context of its propaganda efforts. It became fashionable to talk about Russia rising from its knees, that we are all patriots, and that we will now continue to fulfill the very role the Soviet Union once played in the global system.

If you closely follow the recent trend in official propaganda, you’ll notice it’s suddenly become fashionable to say, “Wait, what do you want from Russia?” Do you want us, like the Soviet Union once did, to stand up for Cuba? We must understand, they say, that the modern Russian Federation is not the former Soviet Union. We don’t have the same capabilities. Let’s be realistic, they say, and take a stand on reality. One can indeed agree with them on some points, but only on the one point: bourgeois Russia is in fact incapable of solving the problems that the Soviet Union once could.

It is all the more important for us to intensify any public activity that may emerge, thereby compensating for the lack of state will and capacity to address major challenges. It is clear that today Russia is immersed in the conflict in Ukraine, but during the Cuban Missile Crisis, not only did we not have this conflict, but Russians and Ukrainians were together; within the borders of a single country, they jointly addressed major national and international issues.

To enable our country to once again tackle major challenges, the Communist Party of Russia proposes a Victory Program, the core of which is the preservation of Soviet socialist values ​​and their implementation in practical life: political, social, and socioeconomic. A recent special issue of Pravda newspaper speaks to this. It was published in a large print run of 7 million. If those present here would help our party organizations distribute it, we would be very grateful, for we sincerely believe that only by implementing our Program and moving toward socialism can we once again address the same major challenges our country faced in the 20th century. 

I.N. Makarov, Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation for scientific and educational work, Chairman of the Central Committee of the Russian Union of Socialist Workers:

Latin America groans under US tyranny

Dear friends! This morning we visited the embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Allow me to slightly break diplomatic etiquette and call the head of that country’s diplomatic mission “Comrade Ambassador,” not “Mr. Ambassador.” He truly is our comrade, our comrade-in-arms, our like-minded partner. He once again emphasized the outstanding role currently being played by Gennady Andreyevich Zyuganov and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in the global campaign to free the illegally captured leader of a sovereign state.

On January 3, Gennady Andreevich became the first Russian politician of his stature to denounce the Trump administration’s act of international banditry and to propose the formation of a Public Committee for the Freeing of Nicolás Maduro and His Wife, Cilia Flores, within the Russian Federation.

I’d like to say that our two fraternal movements—Russian Lad and RUSO—immediately took up this initiative and agreed that on the 3rd of each month—let this date be etched in everyone’s memory!—we will hold some form of event dedicated to our political prisoners and prisoners of conscience. One such event was organized today within the walls of the Russian parliament.

You know, just recently, on March 5th, we held an event dedicated to the memory of two outstanding politicians of the 20th and 21st centuries – Joseph Stalin and Hugo Chávez. It so happened that they died on the same day in March. And today I would like to read just a few lines from Hugo Chávez’s remarkable legacy, because it’s unlikely that anyone else among our contemporaries, and this one is ours, can express himself in such vivid, figurative language, tinged with sparkling humor.

Here Hugo Chavez addresses King Juan Carlos of Spain and says the following:

“Ah, King, how little you know of the pain that lives within us, the pain that has lived in human bodies throughout the ages. Lord King, you are accustomed to expressing yourself as your ancestors always did. In response to this, oh worthy representative of your monarchical ancestors, I will quote the words of Bolivar, so that you may remember them:

“A continent separated from Spain by vast seas, richer, more populous than Spain itself, enslaved by three centuries of tyrannical and shameful filth. For three centuries, America groaned under this tyranny, the cruelest human beings could conceive. The bloodthirsty Spaniard vomited upon the marvelous natural beauty of the Colombian coast to transform it into a vast, hateful empire of cruelty and plunder. Death and desolation accompanied his entry into the New World. He wiped out its simple peoples, and when his frenzied rage had nothing left to destroy, he turned it against his own children, whom he himself had sown on the land he had conquered.”

While one can be amazed by the genocidal policies of the indigenous population that the Spanish conquistadors practiced, I think the modern-day thugs in the White House, led by Mr. Trump, have surpassed them in many ways.

Our shared goal is to continually expand the circle of fighters against American imperialism and international terrorism for the ideals of freedom, democracy, and social justice, as Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin spoke of at the 19th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in 1952: “The banner of democratic freedoms and human rights has been thrown overboard today. And there is no one left to raise it except ourselves.”

Today’s meeting, I believe, will serve to unite our ranks. And at its conclusion, if you allow me, we will present to you the text of an official statement on behalf of everyone gathered here. 

D.V. Agranovsky, lawyer, attorney, permanent host of a program on the Red Line TV channel:

Freedom for the President of Venezuela – a political prisoner, a prisoner of war, a victim of kidnapping!

Dear friends! First of all, I would like to agree with Dmitry Georgievich that our committee’s work has taken on a much more serious nature, because when our committee was first formed, Nicolás Maduro’s prospects looked quite bleak. But now that the Americans are thoroughly mired in Iran, everything has changed dramatically. And I don’t even rule out the possibility that in the future, Nicolás Maduro could become a bargaining chip or, as Trump says, a “deal.” In other words, the situation has changed, and Maduro’s prospects no longer look so clear-cut, and, accordingly, the importance of our committee’s work in this regard is increasing.

Next, I’d just like to talk about terminology. We’re not discussing this, but I’ve seen this assessment more than once in the media, even in Russian ones, that Nicolás Maduro was detained and is now on trial. Nicolás Maduro wasn’t detained in the sense defined by our criminal procedure code and international conventions.

He was kidnapped. Therefore, Nicolás Maduro’s status combines that of a political prisoner, a victim of a crime (as kidnapping is a particularly serious crime in any country), and a prisoner of war. On the 5th, in court, Nicolás Maduro stated that he was a prisoner and emphasized that he remains the acting head of state.

Furthermore, it’s probably also incorrect to say that a trial is underway, since US courts lack extraterritorial jurisdiction to try heads of state of other countries. Not to mention that heads of state are inherently immune. Therefore, I think we all reject US jurisdiction over Nicolas Madura.

But nevertheless, there is a certain process that, for simplicity’s sake, we call a trial. Especially since it takes place, after all, in a courtroom and, outwardly, it has certain attributes of a trial. But what these attributes are externally, I’d like to elaborate a bit on that.

A problem arose with Maduro’s lawyers, and on March 26th, the trial was even postponed without a date. Maduro has now secured a lawyer, Barry Pollack. My knowledge of him speaks highly of him. He defended Julian Assange, for example. Any lawyer should defend everyone, I know that from personal experience. But Pollack even treats these kinds of clients with some sympathy and understanding. And Cilia Flores is being defended by lawyer Mark Donnelly. He’s far less decorated, but judging by his background, he’s also quite competent.

They’ve entered the trial semi-officially because Venezuela can’t afford legal assistance. It’s under sanctions, so no one can negotiate with lawyers or pay for their legal assistance. And that’s precisely why the judge found himself at a dead end and adjourned the trial indefinitely. Even the American court found this defense argument baffling, so for now the trial is running into some natural obstacles.

We’ll keep an eye on him. I think we’ll get some information. Maybe, if we’re lucky, if the embassy helps, we’ll even get firsthand information.

But today, I’d like to point out something else. Basic rights exist. Calling this a trial, a trial implies an adversarial process, and right now, even the basic rights of Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores aren’t being guaranteed. Although we have prominent, reputable lawyers, their right to a defense hasn’t yet been formally guaranteed. How they’ll ensure this right is unclear, because the US government is still digging its heels in and refusing to lift sanctions on this issue. So, right now, it’s safe to say that Nicolás Maduro’s right to a defense isn’t guaranteed, even within the American legal system.

Therefore, as I have said on previous occasions, freedom for Nicolas Maduro!