Juan Guaido, the face of the Venezuelan opposition, said yesterday in Washington that he fears that if he returns to his country, “he may know the fate of Navalny”, referring to Alexei Navalny, a Russian opposition prisoner in Russia.

Mr. Guaido, who arrived in the United States several days ago by plane from Colombia, saying that the Colombian authorities had deported him, participated in a forum yesterday at the Wilson Center think tank in the American capital.

“If you ask me today if I can return to Venezuela tomorrow, as I did in 2019 and 2020, or as Navalny returned (to Russia), I am sure that I may meet the same fate” as him, the opposition leader said.

Protesters apparently supporting the government of socialist President Nicolas Maduro disrupted the debate, chanting “Guaido is a liar,” before being escorted out of the room.

Mr. Guaido is not exactly persona non grata, but it is obvious that Washington is now keeping its distance from him who was a former protégé of the USA.

“I’m not aware of any plans” to meet with the opposition politician, State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said Wednesday when asked during a regular briefing of accredited editors if anything was planned within the week.

The person concerned had said that he intended to see American parliamentarians, however, it does not appear that any meeting with officials of Joe Biden’s government has been planned, at least so far.

Mr Guaido went to the US after he said he was expelled from Colombia, where he wanted to appear uninvited at a recent international summit organized by Bogota on how to facilitate the resumption of dialogue in Venezuela. The oppositionist complained that the development was part of the ongoing “persecution”.

Bogotá denied being deported.

Arrived on April 25 by commercial flight to Miami (Florida, southeast USA).

Yesterday at the Wilson Center he clarified that his wife Fabiana Rosales and their two daughters were able to go to the US on Monday.

It is not clear at this time whether he plans to seek asylum in the US.

The opposition figure has been officially banned from leaving the country since 2019 as he faces various prosecutions, including prosecution for “treason”.

The former speaker of Venezuela’s parliament has been named by the US and its allies as the Latin American country’s de facto interim president since 2019, following the controversial re-election of socialist Nicolas Maduro to the presidency in 2018, in elections that the opposition abstained from and the result of which he refused to acknowledge. But at the end of 2022, Venezuela’s divided opposition put an end to the “interim government” of Juan Guaido.