Russia has hedged its lead as the most prolific arms dealer in the world (yes, even more than the US) with a recent agreement with Venezuela.
Oil-rich Venezuela is a major purchaser of Russian weapons and hardware. In 2005-2006, Venezuela ordered weaponry from Russia worth $3.4 billion, including 24 Su-30MK2V Flanker fighters, Tor-M1 air defense missile systems, Mi-17B multi-role helicopters, Mi-35 Hind E attack helicopters and Mi-26 Halo heavy transport helicopters.
Russia has repeatedly stated that it will actively participate in the modernization of the Venezuelan armed forces until 2013.
Kommersant said negotiations were underway on the purchase of 10 Il-76 Candid military transport planes and two Il-78-MK aerial tankers for the Venezuelan Air Force. The contract will be worth a total of $600 million.
Deliveries will be completed next year. The aircraft will replace six outdated American Lockheed C-130H Hercules transport planes and two Boeing 707-320C aerial tankers.
Venezuela and Russia have also agreed on the purchase of four Kilo-class Project 636 diesel submarines. The terms of the deal, estimated at $1.2 billion, were negotiated late last year.
The Project 636 submarine is designed for anti-submarine warfare and anti-surface-ship warfare, and also for general reconnaissance and patrol missions. It is considered to be one of the quietest diesel submarines in the world.
The strategic problems having (very quiet) Venezuelan submarines patrolling the Atlantic and Caribbean oceans should not be overlooked. To me, this is akin to Russia placing strategic missiles on Cuba.
The Nine/Eleven Finding Answers (NEFA) Foundation has published an analysis of the documents Columbia captured in the recent raid on the FARC camp in Ecuador. Among the findings is an extremely close tie between Hugo Chavez and the criminal narco-terror and kidnapping enterprise that FARC represents.
In 1992, Huga Chavez attempted a coup d’etat in Venezuela and was jailed when it was unsuccessful. FARC sent Chavez $150,000 while he was in prison. When Chavez rose to the Presidency in 1998, the friendship had already been well entrenched.
The first thing the captured documents uncover is the business relationship between FARC and Chavez.
The second is the FARC’s extraordinary reach into regional politics, particularly in Ecuador, where the government appears to be willing to change senior military commanders along the border (the area where Reyes was killed) in order to curry favor with the FARC.
The third is the FARC’s apparent willingness to engage in trafficking of material (uranium) that could be used for a low-grade nuclear bomb. The type and grade of uranium in question indicate the FARC had been the victim of a scam or was planning on perpetrating a scam on an unsuspecting third party.
The fourth major theme is the desire to exchange their hostages for captured FARC leaders, using an international stage that will gain the FARC increased legitimacy. This plan, called the Humanitarian Accord, is a strategy explicitly copied from the strategy used by the FMLIN and other insurgent groups in Central America in the 1980s.
That process, initiated on Contadora Island off the coast of Panama, would be substituted for a similar process of negotiations on Isla Margarita, off the coast of Venezuela.
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