Argentine President Javier Milei met with exiled Venezuelan opposition leader Edmundo González Urrutia in Casa Rosada on Saturday and referred to him as the Venezuelan “president elect.” The episode will certainly fuel the tension between both countries, which is arguably at an all-time high. In addition to a fierce dispute over the legitimacy of the July presidential election in Venezuela, the Maduro administration also arrested an Argentine gendarme in early December after accusing him of espionage.

The meeting between Milei and Urrutia began in Casa Rosada around 11 a.m. on Saturday. It lasted a little over 30 minutes. Following their sit-down, the pair made a public appearance on the balcony of the presidential palace and waved at a crowd of hundreds waving Venezuelan flags in Plaza de Mayo. With nearly 130,000 people, the Venezuelan community is the third-largest migrant community in Argentina. 

“Venezuelans, we will also meet in the streets of our beloved country,” González Urrutia wrote later on his X account.

In an official communiqué following the meeting, the Argentine government called González Urrutia “Venezuela’s president-elect,” adding that he “is under political persecution by the regime of dictator Nicolás Maduro.”

Maduro is set to take office on January 10 after a controversial election in which the National Electoral Council declared him the winner without offering supporting evidence. The opposition claims that pre-election polls, independent analyses, and their own disaggregated data show that they were the actual winners. On Saturday, González Urrutia gifted Milei a framed voting tally (known in Spanish as an acta) indicating he had won.

Caracas has announced a US$100,000 reward for information on the whereabouts of González Urrutia. The government accuses him of conspiracy, complicity in the use of violent acts, document forgery, and money laundering, among other crimes. 

According to the statement put out by the Argentine government, Milei and González Urrutia also spoke about “the illegal detention of Argentine gendarme Nahuel Gallo by the Chavista regime.” On December 8, the Venezuelan government arrested Gallo, deepening the feud between Milei and Maduro’s administrations.

While Venezuela claims Gallo was “on a mission” to attack Venezuela, his relatives say he was there to visit his partner and son. The Organization of American States has called Gallo’s arrest “a crime against humanity.”

González Urrutia gave a press conference following his meeting with Milei alongside Argentina’s Security and Foreign Ministers, Patricia Bullrich and Gerardo Werthein. He said he intends to go back to his country to “take the office” he had won thanks to the “more than 7 million votes” he received.

Urrutia also called for the “release of the Argentine citizen unjustly detained in Venezuela.” When asked to clarify, he said he was referring to “the Argentine gendarme detained in Caracas” and that his aspiration was that he be granted a “prompt release.”