Venezuela: more evidence

I wrote a story on Monday reporting that Medvedev and Russian officials had given Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez less than he wanted during a visit last week.

A news report today bolsters that point. The Associated Press is reporting today that the exercises began and ended on Monday. Yet initial news reports said that the Russian Navy would engage in five days of exercises with the Venezuelan Navy. As late as last week, the joint maneuvers were supposed to last three days.

This provides more evidence that the Russians wanted to poke the United States in the eye by coming to Venezuela but not repeatedly, as Frank Mora, a professor of National Security Studies at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., told me on Monday.

In an interesting detail, Tom Shannon, the State Department's top Latin American diplomat, met last week with the Russian ambassador to the United States. It's very possible that the ambassador passed along the message then that Russia would be careful not to embrace Chavez.