Bond deals by Venezuela point to defense purchases made in Moscow to circumvent a U.S. arms embargo and other difficulties faced by Caracas in its quest for military suppliers for its armed forces.
The bond deals worth $3.6 billion come at a time of growing political uncertainty in Venezuela over the health of President Hugo Chavez, who is receiving treatment for cancer in Cuba.
As a reference for the news article above is a graph I pulled together from data from SIPRI (www.sipri.org) on Russian arms exports to Venezuela. The data are for the years 1992-2010. As I have noted in posts on Syria, Russia appears to play by different rules with foreign policy when arms deals are available.
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