Nearly a generation after traditional Soviet ties were severed with the collapse of communism, Russia is openly moving to establish a foothold in Latin America. If years of cordial relations between Russian leaders and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez were seen as business as usual, Chavez's visit last week - the seventh in as many years - drove home the obvious. In wake of the latest conflict over Georgia, Russia is openly forging new alliances as a counterweight to the United States. This time, more so than during last visits, officials are openly admitting as much.
"Latin America is becoming a noticeable link in the chain of the multi-polar world that is forming," Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Thursday at his suburban residence at Novo-Ogarevo, just before meeting the Venezuelan leader. "We will pay more and more attention to this vector of our economic and foreign policy."
Chavez was even more outspoken. "Today like never before all that you said on the multi-polar world becomes reality. Let us not lose time," Chavez told Putin. "The world is fast developing geopolitically."
The two-day visit saw Chavez and his counterpart, President Dmitry Medvedev, clinching a whole array of new deals, including billions of dollars worth of weapons, a new gas consortium, and Putin's tentative promise to help develop the South American state's nuclear program.
In particular, the visit helped cement two important energy agreements. Energy leaders, including the heads of Russian gas monopoly Gazprom and Venezuela's PDVSA Servicios, signed a memorandum on cooperation between Gazprom Latin America and PDVSA, leading the way for a powerful oil and gas consortium.
According to a statement from Gazrpom, the agreement envisions major bilateral cooperation in gas production, including transportation, valuation, and processing of hydrocarbons. "Gazprom has been successfully working in Venezuela for many years," the Gazprom statement quotes company head Alexei Miller as saying. "The memorandum that was signed Friday determines the mechanisms of new projects, and will help develop strategic relations over a wide sector not just in Venezuela, but in other South American countries, in particular... Bolivia."
Another document forged an agreement between the Energy Ministers of the two countries for joint cooperation on energy development. According to Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko, the pact means that five leading Russian hydrocarbon producers will invest tens of billions of dollars in Venezuela's energy fields as early as this coming spring.
Also in the works was a deal on developing a civilian nuclear power program, after Putin said on Thursday that Russia was "ready to consider the possibility" of cooperating on civilian nuclear energy.
Chavez was smug upon his return to South America in wake of the Wall Street crisis, chiding Americans and boasting of his country's economic potential.
"I remember how in the past Lehman Brothers insisted that Venezuela's economy is not working, that Chavez doesn't know how to make it work," he was quoted by news agencies as saying this week. "Now Lehman Brothers and Merill Lynch are no longer leaders. Right now we can achieve maximum progress."
Chavez proposed during this week's visit to Brazil that OPEC countries create an oil bank, the Banco Petrolero Internacional, that could serve as a financial alternative for developing countries.
But bolstering new energy alliances was not the only symbolic step in the move towards the "multi-polar world" that Putin and Chavez had spoken of. For the last years, cooperation between Russia and Venezuela has focused on weapons trade, something that Venezuela is particularly grateful for.
After the United States implemented a weapons embargo around Venezuela in May, 2006, Russia defiantly moved to supply the state with $3 billion worth of Su-30 fighter jets. Since 2005, Venezuela has committed itself to purchasing $4.4 billion of Russian fighter jets, tanks and assault rifles. Now, Russia promised Chavez a $1 billion loan to purchase even more Russian arms.
Experts say that Venezuela will focus on obtaining missile defense, such as the Thor-M1 air defense short range missile complex. These can be used to protect its Su-30 air bases from a low range. Twenty complexes will cost about $600 million, according to director of the Center for Strategy and Technology Analysis, Konstantin Makienko.
A more obvious display of close military ties - and what President Medvedev described as "the strategic nature of our relationship" - was a series of naval and aerial exercises that Russia has engaged in.
Two Russian Tu-160 nuclear long-range bombers returned last week from military exercises in Caracas. Russia has agreed to dispatch long-range bombers and warships to Venezuela for exercises near US waters. The nuclear-powered guided missile cruiser Peter the Great was dispatched at the head of a naval flotilla, destined for joint naval exercises in Venezuela's territorial waters in November.
"We are not going to invade anyone, or engage in acts of aggression towards anyone," Chavez assured journalists, with some Western observers worried about the largest such deployment since the end of the Cold War. "But no one should mistake our intention: we are prepared to do everything necessary to defend Venezuelan sovereignty.''
Some Russian military officials tried to downplay the Cold War analogies and denied what appeared to be tit-for-tat measures in response to the presence of NATO and U.S. Navy ships in the Black Sea in wake of the Georgian conflict.
The Tu-160 strategic bombers were unconnected to the events in South Ossetia, Gen. Maj. Alexander Blazhenko was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying. "We had been preparing for the mission for a long time. It was just unclear what country we would go to. Finally, Venezuela proposed a partnership."
Whatever the intentions, geopolitically the movements are hard to disconnect from what Russia perceives as American incursions into its sphere of influence.
Moscow has repeatedly warned Washington about NATO expansion in former Soviet republics like Georgia and Ukraine - a global context for Georgia's military action to reign in separatist South Ossetia last month, and for Russia's quick military response.
Washington took a tough stance against Russia, calling its military action unacceptable, but more recently some U.S. officials reportedly began admitting off the record that the United States might have done the same in response to military turmoil in its traditional sphere of influence. That traditional sphere of influence, of course, is Latin America.
While U.S. Defense Department spokesman Geogg Morrell called the Venezuelan exercises a "provocation" in an interview to CNN, he said that Russia was acting "within its rights." All the while, he said that Russia knows that the United States is watching closely.
By Anna Arutunyan
