The lieutenant on his yearly visit to Russia

"I want to buy this with Venezuela's money"

Chávez is right now in Russia for his usual shopping tour in the Slavic nation. This is his 9th visit to that country. He plans to meet Medvedev and Putin on 13 and 14 October and then go to Belarus to "help Lukashenko in the presidential campaign", as he said. After that, Chávez wants to visit China.

Here a list of Chávez's visits to Russia

1) May 2001

2) Nov 2004

3) July 2006

4) Juny 2007

6) July 2008

7) September 2008

8) September 2009

9) October 2010

What to expect? Chávez will probably look for more weapons and other technologies for power control. Venezuela is going through its longest oil boom ever and yet there are good chances Chávez will be looking for further ways to finance his regime. The Venezuelan government will announce 843 cooperation agreements on "technology transfer, cooperation on technology, social programmes" and the like. As usual, most of it will be hot air or very expensive ventures hardly related to sustainable development.

The Russians already control important companies for extraction of precious metals in Venezuelan Guayana.

One of the announcements Chávez will make - again - is that Belorussians will build from 5 to 20 thousand houses for Venezuelans. I wonder how Chávez supporters explain the rest of Venezuela why Venezuelans, with their many thousands of engineers and workers, cannot build normal houses themselves. The Venezuelan private sector will have a meeting with the minister for housing in the following days to try to reach an agreement so that the Venezuelan government allows them to do part of the work.

As far as I see, this is the "plan":

Russia: 13-14: meeting Putin-Medvedev

Belarus: 15-17: meeting Lukashenko

Ukraine: 18-19: meeting new pro-Russia president Yakunovich

Iran: meeting Akhmadinejad

China: ???

Lybia: meeting Khadafi

Portugal: ???