Venezuela-Belarus (updated)

In Minsk for the usual stuff

Hugo arrived in Belarus on his usual autumn world tour.

Can any of you identify who the woman to his right is? Lenta says she is his "companion". I initially thought she was one of his daughters, but this does not look like a daughter thing to me.

The Belorussian article says Venezuelans currently following courses at the War Academy met Hugo at the airport. It also talks about the agreements Hugo and Luka will sign on construction (Belorussians building houses in Venezuela as Venezuelans are apparently incapable of doing that), oil (Venezuela pays those houses with oil galore) and other agreements.

Luka will be showing Hugo around Minsk. They will visit, among other things, a public library. As Hugo always comes back with ideas he picks up abroad, I really hope for once he DOES pick up one good idea: the idea of financing public libraries. Above all, I hope he actually for once in his 12 years in office gets one thing done and we finally get loads of public libraries not filled up with books on Marx, Guevara and Hugo, but with books of mathematics, biology, world history, English, Spanish and so much more.

As I had previously written in Spanish here, Belorussians will be getting an increasing amount of oil from Venezuela through Lithuania in a move that doesn't look economically sensible to me (but then I know nothing about oil and economics).

Update:

And now Hugo, as usual, started to become emotional and promised Belarus that it would have oil for 200 years and that Belarus and Venezuela would build an alternative to imperialism. Luka told Hugo Belarus would do anything in its power for Venezuela. He was very frank to say Venezuela (or actually Chávez) helped Belarus at a moment of great need. He was obviously referring to the higher gas and oil prices Russia was demanding from the Belorussian government, prices it cannot pay. I am sure the Russians are not very amused to see this going on...but as long as Hugo keeps giving away enough to them, I am sure they won't bother.

Ukraine and lessons for Venezuela

Next stop will be Ukraine. Hugo is visiting Ukraine for the first time. He had not visited it before because the people in power were the ones that came with the so-called Orange Revolution. Now that pro-Russian and former felon Yanukovich is in power, Hugo feels he can have a strategic partner in Eastern Europe's second largest country.

Ukraine should be a lesson to Venezuelans: that "Revolution" was indeed little more than a government change too obviously supported by US interests and too empty of real content, totally lacking any development plan. The leaders were as corrupt as Yanukovich is, but on top of that they spent most of their time quarreling among themselves. If Venezuelans ever want to have a developed nation and avoid a Chávez II, they will have to support groups that distance themselves completely from selfish and doubtful leaders (read Rosales and other AD/COPEI/PSUV dinosaurs) and above all support a movement with a real plan for Venezuela's sustainable development.