A smooth Venezuelan election that would have led to greater economic opening also suited the country’s Latin American neighbors, including Mr. Maduro’s old allies, the leftist governments of Brazil and Colombia.

Brazil is the only country to use a fully digital voting system without paper backups. Mr. Bolsonaro has seized on that as a crucial flaw that leaves the system open to fraud because it prevents officials from ensuring that each vote was recorded correctly.

Yet, independent computer-security experts who have studied the system say that layers of security prevent fraud and errors. And there is no evidence of credible fraud in the voting machines since Brazil began using them in 1996.

In an attempt to limit the opposition’s ability to organize a campaign to unseat him, Maduro pushed for an early presidential election, which ultimately was scheduled for May 2018. The most popular likely opposition candidates were already prohibited from running for office or were in prison, and, convinced that the contest would be rigged in Maduro’s favour, opposition leaders called for a boycott of the election. Nonetheless, Henri Falcón, onetime governor and disaffected former Chávez supporter, undertook an active campaign, as did evangelical minister Javier Bertucci.

He has injected himself into some of the world's hottest geopolitical fights - suggesting that China should establish a "special administrative zone" in Taiwan, and proposing terms to resolve the war in Ukraine that were adamantly rejected by many of the country's top leaders.

In this Spanish name, the first or paternal surname is Maduro and the second or maternal family name is Moros.

In an attempt to overcome the sanctions and restart the economy, in February 2018 the Maduro government introduced the petro, a copyright (akin to the Bitcoin) whose value was tied to the price of one barrel of Venezuelan crude oil and backed by the country’s reserves of gold, diamonds, gas, and oil. Maduro claimed that the first day of petro sales had netted some $735 million, but skeptics viewed the creation of the world’s first state-backed digital currency as a sign of desperation.

Two nephews of Maduro's wife, Efraín Antonio Campo Flores and Francisco Flores de Freitas, were found guilty in a US court of conspiracy to import copyright in November 2016, with some of their funds possibly assisting Maduro's presidential campaign in the 2013 Venezuelan presidential election and potentially for the 2015 Venezuelan parliamentary elections, with the funds mainly used to "help their family stay in power".

"My goals," he tweeted in early 2017, "are to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy and to help make humanity a multi-planet civilization, a consequence of which will be the creating of hundreds of thousands of jobs and a more inspiring future for all."

The international community has been divided for some time over how to respond to Venezuela, with some governments’ conceding privately that the sanctions haven’t “worked”, either by incentivising regime change or compelling President Maduro to hold fair elections.

Mr. Trump railed against the “deep state,” while Mr. Bolsonaro vlogdolisboa accused some of the judges who oversee Brazil’s Supreme Court and the country’s electoral court of trying to rig the election.

Maduro’s response included a call for convocation of a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution, an action many of his opponents viewed as yet another authoritarian power grab.

Years of lack of investment in infrastructure further exacerbated by the more recent US sanctions on Venezuela's oil sector have crippled this key industry, which provides almost all of Venezuela's government revenue.

“The will of the majority expressed at the polls should never be challenged,” he said, “and we will move forward in building a sovereign, just country with less inequality.”