now is to support the people who are in venezuela, juan guaido and others, who are in venezuela. i believe that the front line for the freedom of venezuela is in venezuelan territory. but that also needs to take into consideration the millions of venezuelans that are outside that can also support. do you seriously think juan guaido, after everything that s happened and the fact that he s essentially been fired by his own national assembly from the interim presidency post that he claimed, is he a serious contender against maduro in 2024? well, he s certainly one of the contenders that could be there. but my point, stephen, precisely, is that the people of venezuela should decide that. not you, not me, not anybody. it should be the people of venezuela through a process of primaries. and whoever wins, it doesn t matter who wins, should get the support of all of the rest of the parties and the venezuelan people. and that s the only window of opportunity that we have to have a mobilisation
and migration crisis in the planet. let me rephrase this. venezuela has today the largest migration crisis in the planet. according to the un, 7.1 million venezuelans, of a population of 30 million, have fled our country looking for opportunities. so venezuelans want change. and we did underestimate not just the power of maduro, but also the international support that maduro has gotten. we have received international support from the us, from europe, from other countries, mostly in diplomatic support, in political support. however, maduro has the support of china, of russia, of iran, of turkey, of belarus, of cuba in ways that are not comparable to the type of support that we have. well, we ll get to the international situation and diplomacy in just a second. but let s just stick with what s happening inside venezuela. you re popular will party, and let s remind ourselves
time we spoke, we had absolutely nothing to do with the group of mercenaries that came to venezuela in 2020. this is something that came up in our last interview. and i want to reiterate that. guaido, myself or our party had nothing to do with that. with respect to the management of assets, there are different approaches to that. we were able, guaido was able to safeguard one of the largest assets that venezuela has, citgo refinery with absolute transparency, efficiency. and now, unfortunately, that asset is in a very fragile legal situation that might be lost precisely because of the dismantling of the interim government. there were mistakes, of course, stephen, there were mistakes. but there were no mistakes of intention. what i mean is that. but good intentions also need wise political instincts and actions. and i m going to quote to you a writer who specialises in venezuela, william neuman in the atlantic magazine. just a few days ago, he wrote this, that,
juan guaido and leopoldo lopez continued to alienate other groups in the venezuelan opposition. acting unilaterally, heavy handedly, they lurched from mistake to mistake, finally leaving the opposition base disillusioned. is this the end of the road for you as a leader of the opposition? no, it s not the end of the road for the venezuelan people and the hopes of the venezuelan people to continue to struggle for freedom. and there is a very clear path forward, and that path forward that there is an agreement among all of the disagreements that we have, because there is a lot of noise. of course there is. but the commitment that we have is that we need to engage the compromise to go to the 2024 presidential elections with a single candidate elected by primaries. so our main focus and what we are asking the international community, what we are asking all of the venezuelan people is to engage in a process to build the unity of all the democratic sectors in venezuela through the peopl
yes, we continue to have maduro as a criminal dictator that has crushed and crumbled our country. but our commitment, all of us, it needs to be to continue to struggle for freedom and to continue to be optimistic that we will see a free venezuela, hopefully sooner than later. what is not an option for us is rendition. just a few moments ago, mr lopez, you talked with great passion about the suffering of the venezuelan people and the fact that 7 million have fled the country because of the economic catastrophe that has faced them. one of the easiest things you could do right now would be to say to the united states, to the europeans, and others who ve imposed harsh sanctions on the maduro regime, that in the interests of the humanitarian situation, the time is now right to ease and lift those sanctions. are you ready to do that? well, it s already happened that the unified platform that is negotiating