Denmark and Mexico, also threatened by US President Donald Trump, warn that the US violated international law.

Members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), including key US allies, have warned that the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife by US special forces could be a precedent-setting event for international law.

The 15-member bloc met for an emergency meeting on Monday in New York City, where the Venezuelan pair were also due to face drug trafficking charges in a US federal court.

Venezuela’s ambassador to the UN, Samuel Moncada, condemned the US operation as “an illegitimate armed attack lacking any legal justification”, in remarks echoed by Cuba, Colombia and permanent UNSC members Russia and China.

“[The US] imposes the application of its laws outside its own territory and far from its coasts, where it has no jurisdiction, using assaults and the appropriation of assets,” Cuba’s ambassador, Ernesto Soberon Guzman, said, adding that such measures negatively affected Cuba.

Russia’s ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, said the US cannot “proclaim itself as some kind of a supreme judge, which alone bears the right to invade any country, to label culprits, to hand down and to enforce punishments irrespective of notions of international law, sovereignty and non-intervention”.

Notable critics at the emergency session included traditional US allies, Mexico and Denmark, both of whom Trump has separately threatened with military action over the past year.

Mexico’s ambassador, Hector Vasconcelos, said that the council had an “obligation to act decisively and without double standards” towards the US, and it was for “sovereign peoples to decide their destinies,” according to a UN readout.

His remarks come just days after Trump told reporters that “something will have to be done about Mexico” and its drug cartels, following Maduro’s abduction.

Denmark, a longstanding US security ally, said that “no state should seek to influence political outcomes in Venezuela through the use of threat of force or through other means inconsistent with international law.”

“The inviolability of borders is not up for negotiation,” Denmark’s ambassador, Christina Markus Lassen, told the council in an oblique reference to Trump’s threat that the US would annex Greenland, a self-governed Danish territory.

France, another permanent member of the UNSC, also criticised the US, marking a shift in tone from French President Emmanuel Macron’s initial remarks that Venezuelans “can only rejoice” following Maduro’s abduction.

“The military operation that has led to the capture of Maduro runs counter to the principle of peaceful dispute resolution and runs counter to the principle of non-use of force,” said the French deputy ambassador, Jay Dharmadhikari.

Representatives from Latvia and the United Kingdom, another permanent UNSC member, focused on the conditions in Venezuela created by Maduro’s government.

Latvia’s ambassador, Sanita Pavļuta-Deslandes, said that Maduro’s conditions in Venezuela posed “a grave threat to the security of the region and the world”, citing mass repression, corruption, organised crime and drug trafficking.

The UK ambassador, James Kariuki, said that “Maduro’s claim to power was fraudulent”.

The US ambassador, Mike Waltz, characterised the abduction of Maduro and his wife as a “surgical law enforcement operation facilitated by the US military against two indicted fugitives of American justice”.

The White House defended its wave of air strikes on Venezuela, and in the waters near it, and Maduro’s abduction as necessary to protect US national security, amid unproven claims that Maduro backed “narcoterrorist” drug cartels.

KYIV, Jan 5 (Reuters) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday that he planned to replace the head of the country’s SBU security service, Vasyl Maliuk, as part of a wider reshuffle that has also seen a new presidential chief of staff.

Maliuk was appointed SBU chief in February 2023, having already served as acting head for months before.

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The SBU said he also oversaw a strike on a Russian submarine and three attacks on the bridge connecting Russia to the occupied Crimean peninsula, a crucial logistical node for Moscow.

Maliuk has been praised by analysts for improving the SBU’s effectiveness, after his predecessor Ivan Bakanov was dismissed by Zelenskiy in July 2022 for failing to root out Russian spies.

Zelenskiy said on X that he had asked Maliuk instead to focus more on combat operations, adding: “There must be more Ukrainian asymmetric operations against the occupier and the Russian state, and more solid results in eliminating the enemy.”

The move comes days after Zelenskiy announced military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov would become his new chief of staff, and that he would seek to appoint new defence and energy ministers.

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Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Monday condemned what she described as U.S. intervention in Venezuela and rejected the idea of American troops entering Mexico, reaffirming her government’s commitment to national sovereignty.

“We categorically reject intervention in the internal affairs of other countries,” Sheinbaum said at a press conference in Mexico City, according to an official transcript of the speech released by her office.

“The history of Latin America is clear and forceful, the intervention has never brought democracy, it has never generated well-being or lasting stability. Only people can build their own future, decide their path, exercise sovereignty over their natural resources and freely define their form of government,” she said.

The U.S. military on Saturday carried out an operation in Caracas, extracting former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, from their compound.

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Maduro and Flores were boarded onto USS Iwo Jima and flown to New York to face federal charges, with their arraignment taking place on Monday in Manhattan.

Maduro is charged with four counts: narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine-guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine-guns and destructive devices.

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His wife is charged with three counts: cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine-guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine-guns and destructive devices.

Sheinbaum said that following the capture of Venezuela’s leader and his wife, and amid warnings from President Donald Trump that Mexico must “get their act together,” Mexican sovereignty and self-determination remain non-negotiable.

Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that he thinks Sheinbaum is a “terrific person,” but the cartels are “running Mexico.”

“We’re going to have to do something. We’d love Mexico to do it, they’re capable of doing it, but unfortunately the cartels are very strong in Mexico,” Trump said.

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Sheinbaum said her country is cooperating with the United States to help fight against drug trafficking, organized crime and the flow of fentanyl.

“I don’t believe in an invasion. I don’t even think it’s something they’re taking very seriously,” Sheinbaum told reporters in Spanish when asked about a potential U.S. intervention, according to Reuters’ translation of her remarks.

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She said Trump has repeatedly insisted during their phone conversations that the U.S. Army be allowed to enter Mexico.

“We have said no very firmly — first because we defend our sovereignty, and second because it is not necessary,” Sheinbaum told reporters.